A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
