A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
