A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
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 save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
