A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
