A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions 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 guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
