A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case 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 alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.