A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate 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 private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
