A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
