A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo 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 redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
