A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved 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 redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
