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A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.

Central Accusations and Particulars

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

They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew 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 sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.

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 animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Connected Incidents

The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

Reports of the case 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 appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted 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 online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

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