A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
