A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo 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 damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
