A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated 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 crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing 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 combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
