A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. 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 authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
