A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged 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 office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
