A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened 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 subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree 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 damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
