A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, 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 initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged 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 office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
