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A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.

“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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority 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 “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.