A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious 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 temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction 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 religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree 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 sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.