A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated 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 authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call 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 combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
