A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
