A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated 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 “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
