A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
