A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract 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 makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
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 animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. 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 said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized 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 intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
