A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds 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 alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
