A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false 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 communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
