A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
