A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted 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, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
