A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting 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 investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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 Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, 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 exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
