A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree 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 intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
