A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting 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 detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
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.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
