A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
