A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority 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 “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
