A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood 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 together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 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 “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
