A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
