A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case 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 said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
