A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
