A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
