A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
