A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
