A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil 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 port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules 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.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office 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 appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
