🔗 Share this article Italian ‘Mystic’ Faces Deception Trial Regarding Allegations Virgin Mary Statue Shed Blood A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud. Key Charges and Particulars The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year. They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers. Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children. Additional Claims Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism. Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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, the attorney. Context and Connected Events Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje. Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”. The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers. The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.