A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
