A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
