A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation 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 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
