A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared 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 a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
