A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
