A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural 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 figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
