A so-called mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry 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 strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
