A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling 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 damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
