A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
