A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
