A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions 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 shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing 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 intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
