A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
