A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree 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 damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
