A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing 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 aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
