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A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Details

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

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside 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 €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

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

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.

“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, the attorney.

Background and Connected Incidents

The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.