A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned 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 port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
