A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
