A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
