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A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Key Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted 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 opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.

“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.

Context and Connected Incidents

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed 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 seers.

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