A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, 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 scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
