A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem 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 emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
