A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure 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 figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
