A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears 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 the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
