A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
