A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up 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 earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
