A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
