A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure 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 figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
