A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town 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 stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic 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 collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 a woman 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 apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, 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 extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
