A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
