A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure 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 substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved 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 aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
