A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
