A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure 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 visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence 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 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
