A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims 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 Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office 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 appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
