A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
