A so-called mystic 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 Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
