A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
