A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
