A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges 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 the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated 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 frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
