A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European 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 guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
