A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
