A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along 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 donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
