A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure 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 apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
