A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
