A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims 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.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
