A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions 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 guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
