A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French 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 said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
