A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil 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 opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo 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 redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
