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A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Central Accusations and Particulars

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

They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned 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 initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.