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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. 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.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor 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 private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Related Events

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

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