A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed 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 requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.