A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, 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 inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
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 shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.