A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office 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 appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
