Italian ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Court Case Over Claims Madonna Figure Shed Bloody Tears
A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
