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A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Central Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Related Incidents

Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.

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 requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.

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