A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial 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 ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
