A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
