Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Confronts Deception Trial Over Claims Madonna Figure Wept Blood
A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed 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 requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
