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A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Key Charges and Details

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

They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.

“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, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.

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