A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
