A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key 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 the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure 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 decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
