A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“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.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial 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 alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
