Italian ‘Mystic’ Confronts Deception Trial Over Allegations Virgin Mary Figure Wept Bloody Tears
A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
