The Vatican's doctrinal watchdog on
Thursday confirmed a March 6 decree by a local bishop asserting
that alleged sightings of the Madonna at Trevignano north of
Rome were not supernatural in nature and warning the faithful
from organising or attending gatherings at the alleged
apparition site.
The Vatican Department for the Doctrine of the Faith recognised
the "juridical validity" of the decree with which the bishop of
Civita Castellana, Msgr. Marco Salvi, had declared on 6 March
last that the alleged apparitions of Our Lady in Trevignano were
not supernatural, and warned "the faithful to refrain from
organising and/or participating in private and/or public
meetings (be they prayer and/or catechetical) that would give as
certain and indubitable the supernatural truth of the events of
Trevignano".
In his March 6 decree Msgr Salvi declared the non-supernatural
nature of the alleged apparitions of the Madonna in Trevignano,
on the shores
of Lake Bracciano.
He told a locally based self-styled soothsayer, Gisella Cardia,
to stop calling people to a hillside there over which the fake
apparitions allegedly take place on the third of every month.
Cardia, a 54-year-old Sicilian woman who moved to Trevignano
after receiving a two-year suspended sentence for bankruptcy
when
her ceramics firm went bust in Sicily in 2013, has been hosting
the apparition events for the last six years.
She has passed on messages from the Madonna including ones on
Satan brewing catastrophes including the destruction of Rome by
an
earthquake, and the takeover of the Catholic Church by
Communism.
The former businesswoman, who until a few years ago went by her
birth name, Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, also set up a makeshift
shrine, which was recently dismantled on Church and police
orders, containing a statue of Mary she said wept blood.
She bought it at the Bosnian apparition shrine of Medjugorje a
few years ago.
Cardia has also said she has been lucky in her efforts to feed
the hundreds of visitors to the alleged apparition site, since
she has found she is able to multiply gnocchi and pizza.
Cardia has said she is undeterred, telling reporters amid
milling faithful "the Madonna is with me".
Making her monthly appearance at Trevignano on the third day of
the month, when hundreds come to see Mary 'appear' above the
Campo delle Rose, and ringed by bodyguards and video makers to
keep journalists at bay, she said "I intend to keep
staying here and I won't budge an inch because I'm in the house
of God and I have the Madonna on my side".
On May 17 the Vatican issued its latest cracked down on
apparitions and blood-weeping statues saying only the pope can
say what is supernatural or not.
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