🔗 Share this article

A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Key Charges and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds 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 a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry 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 hoaxes.

“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, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.