Self-proclaimed Visionary Faces Fraud Court Case Regarding Claims Virgin Mary Figure Wept Blood

A so-called visionary 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 Accusations and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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, the attorney.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

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