Italian ‘Mystic’ Confronts Fraud Court Case Over Allegations Virgin Mary Figure Wept Bloody Tears
A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.