A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
