A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case 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 alleged 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 authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized 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 extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
