A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
