A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. 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, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
