A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
