A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
