A so-called mystic who drew 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 alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure 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 French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
