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A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Central Accusations and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.

“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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Background and Connected Incidents

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.

The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.