A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
