A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions 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 requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions 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 spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
