A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing 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 action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
