A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
