A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting 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 approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
