A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
