A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing 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 counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
