A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared 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 alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
