A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, 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 visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
