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A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Key Accusations and Particulars

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

They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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.

Background and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. 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 announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.

The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.