A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted 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.
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 pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous 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 declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions 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 damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
