A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people 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 alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
