Italian Visionary Faces Fraud Court Case Regarding Claims Madonna Statue Shed Blood
A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with 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 takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
