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A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Particulars

The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.

“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to 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 counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

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