A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French 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”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
