A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced 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 “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
