A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
