A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
