A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation 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 strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
