A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged 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 asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
