A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages 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 issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
