A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, 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 alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. 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 constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
