A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural 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,” stated 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 religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French 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 said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call 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 counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
