A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
