A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds 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 alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
