🔗 Share this article

A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Key Charges and Particulars

The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.

Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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.

Context and Related Incidents

The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European 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 ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing 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 intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.

The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.