A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
