A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted 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 claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
