Italian Visionary Confronts Deception Trial Regarding Claims Madonna Statue Shed Blood

A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Particulars

The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April 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 people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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.

Context and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted 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 emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.

The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.