A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees 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.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo 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 counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
