A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, 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 initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
