A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals 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 a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing 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 intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
