A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
