A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
