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A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Central Charges and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, 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 labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules 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, the attorney.

Background and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

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