A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
