A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy 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 detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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 Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
