A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated 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 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.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
