A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged 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 helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
