A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many 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 several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.