Italian ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Trial Regarding Allegations Madonna Statue Shed Bloody Tears
A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.