Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Trial Regarding Claims Madonna Statue Shed Blood
A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting 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 detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French 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 purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved 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 sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
