A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save 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 claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
