A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling 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 intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
