A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing 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 intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
