A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed 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 call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
