A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors 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 tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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 Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
