A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, 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 claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports 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 alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing 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 action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
