A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to 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 spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
