A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, 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 inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. 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 built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
