Self-proclaimed Visionary Faces Fraud Court Case Over Allegations Virgin Mary Statue Shed Bloody Tears

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

Central Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.

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