Italian ‘Mystic’ Faces Deception Trial Regarding Claims Virgin Mary Statue Shed Blood

A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation 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 strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Related Events

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

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved 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 action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.

The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.