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A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.

Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions 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 aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.

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