A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure 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.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
