A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” 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”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. 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, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
