A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
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 encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
