🔗 Share this article

A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Key Charges 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 orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned 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.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

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 afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a decree 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 intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.