A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
