A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions 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 sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
