A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
