A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed 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 accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, 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 supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
