A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
