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A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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 prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports 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 shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

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