A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy 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 claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
