A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
