A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
