A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
