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A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.