A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
