A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, 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 initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended 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 seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
