A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
