A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting 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 investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
