A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
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 accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate 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 statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling 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 intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
