A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized 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 sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
