A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
