🔗 Share this article

A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.

Context and Related Incidents

The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.

The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.