A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
