A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
