A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover 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 blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared 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 “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff 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 save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
