A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand 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 spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged 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 charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
