A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
