A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
