A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
