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A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims 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.

Central Accusations and Particulars

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

They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations 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, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Incidents

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News 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 appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.