A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved 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 redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
