A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance 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.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
