A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling 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 action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
