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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Central Accusations and Details

The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, 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 followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned 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 port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.

“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 Events

Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.

The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.