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

Central Accusations and Particulars

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

They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.

The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.