A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting 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”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
