A so-called 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 ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
