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A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Central Charges and Details

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

They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous sentence 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 declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.

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