A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
