A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
