A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated 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 campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to 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 proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
