A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built 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 “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
