A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
