A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds 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 alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff 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 redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
