A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue 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 figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
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 not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem 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 claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
