A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims 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 fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
