A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
