A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, 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 extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
