A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing 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 spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
