A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees 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 fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized 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 damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
