A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications 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 false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call 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 counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
