A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
