A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
