A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
