A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
