A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
