A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said 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 said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
