A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing 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 combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
