A so-called mystic who attracted many 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.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save 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 assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
