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A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal 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 deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

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

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.

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