A so-called visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
