A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
