A so-called mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
