A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted 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.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions 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 assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
