A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town 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 transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
