A self-styled visionary who drew 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 claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
