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A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.

Context and Related Incidents

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

Reports of the case 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 alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.

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