A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
