A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate 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 claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
