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

Key Charges and Particulars

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

They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Background and Connected Events

The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

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