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A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.

Key Accusations and Details

The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 Related Events

Cardia, who has a previous sentence 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 visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.

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