A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save 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 encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
