A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic 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 supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
