🔗 Share this article Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Court Case Over Allegations Madonna Figure Shed Blood A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception. Key Charges and Particulars The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year. They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters. Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children. Additional Claims Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology. Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes. “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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney. Context and Related Events The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Reports 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 shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”. The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets. The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.