A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. 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 alleged 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 damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
