A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key 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 the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing 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 aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
