A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
