A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate 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 blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to 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 worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
