A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.