A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
