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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Central Charges and Particulars

The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.

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