A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 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 Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
