A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing 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 intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
