A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
