A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
