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A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Details

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

They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Further Allegations

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

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Related Events

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.

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