A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting 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 opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office 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 redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.