A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating 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 investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
