A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds 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 fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call 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 counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
