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A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Central Charges and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.

“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.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said 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 said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.

The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.