A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call 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 combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
