A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees 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 fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
