A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
