A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
