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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.

Central Charges and Particulars

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

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. 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 constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

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