A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
