A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling 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 damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
