A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew 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 a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
