A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
