A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry 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 subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
