A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
