A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
