A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
