A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, 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 scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
