A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
