A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims 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 deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
