A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
