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A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.

Key Accusations and Particulars

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

They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil 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 initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

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

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.

The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.