A self-styled 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 sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
