A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
