A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue 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 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.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
