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A self-styled visionary who attracted many 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.

Central Charges and Particulars

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

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

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

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

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena 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, the attorney.

Background and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European 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 “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.

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