A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, 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 exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
