A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
