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A so-called mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.

Key Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

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

Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill 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 takeover 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 blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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 her legal representative, the attorney.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.

The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.