A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
