A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came 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 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions 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 requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
