A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
