A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
