A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure 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 French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
