A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 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 issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
