A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
