A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
