A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, 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 trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
