A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month 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 a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
