A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared 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 “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing 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 aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
