A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting 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 inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
