A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications 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 false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions 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 cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
