A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
