A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
