A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds 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 fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News 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 appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
