A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
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 a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions 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 requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
