A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing 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 call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
