Italian Visionary Confronts Fraud Trial Regarding Allegations Virgin Mary Statue Shed Blood

A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Central 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 the coming year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated 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 afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Events

The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.

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