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A so-called visionary who drew many 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 fraud.

Central Charges and Particulars

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

They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences 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.

Background and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and so-called seers.

The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.