A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved 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 intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
