Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Deception Trial Over Allegations Virgin Mary Statue Wept Blood
A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.