A so-called visionary 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 sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
