Self-proclaimed Visionary Confronts Fraud Trial Regarding Allegations Virgin Mary Figure Wept Blood

A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Key Charges and Particulars

The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious 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 makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Related Events

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree 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 sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

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