A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
