A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
