A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions 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 “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office 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 assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
