A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
