A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €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 charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling 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 action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
