A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations 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 false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing 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 intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
