Italian Visionary Confronts Deception Court Case Over Allegations Virgin Mary Statue Wept Bloody Tears
A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said 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 authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
