A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many 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 shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized 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 save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
