A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee 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 approved 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 redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
