🔗 Share this article Italian ‘Mystic’ Confronts Deception Trial Regarding Claims Madonna Figure Wept Bloody Tears A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud. Key Charges and Particulars The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting 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 issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers. Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children. Additional Claims Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology. Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney. Background and Connected Incidents The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje. Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”. The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets. The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.