A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted 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 supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
