A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds 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 suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
