A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial 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 alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree 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 damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
