A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees 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.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case 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 guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
