A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions 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 purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
