A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions 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 cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
