A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
