Italian ‘Mystic’ Confronts Deception Court Case Regarding Allegations Madonna Figure Shed Bloody Tears
A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
