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A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Key Accusations and Details

The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.

“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Events

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

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

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