A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized 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 redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
