A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena 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.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
