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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Key Accusations and Details

The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Connected Incidents

The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced 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 save the world from sin. His action was intended to counter 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 Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.