A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €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 accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
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 labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
