A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
