A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors 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 regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
