A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, 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 declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
