A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
