Self-proclaimed Visionary Faces Deception Court Case Over Claims Virgin Mary Figure Shed Blood

A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Central Charges and Details

The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.