A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case 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 alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
