A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place 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 not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
