A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue 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 alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said 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 “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
