A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. 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 authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
