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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 sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Key Accusations and Particulars

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 staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.

“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, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Connected Incidents

Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions 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 requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.

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