Self-proclaimed Visionary Faces Fraud Trial Regarding Allegations Madonna Figure Shed Blood

A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.

Central Charges and Particulars

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

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized 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 redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.

The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.