A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
