A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities 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 labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” 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”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
