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A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Central Accusations and Details

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

They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.

“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.

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