A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions 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 cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
