A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
