A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
