A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged 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 built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
