A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
