🔗 Share this article Italian Visionary Confronts Fraud Trial Over Allegations Madonna Figure Wept Bloody Tears A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception. Key Accusations and Particulars The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year. They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters. Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children. Further Allegations Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology. Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney. Context and Connected Incidents The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina. News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”. The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets. The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.