A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
