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A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.

Central Charges and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.

They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Related Incidents

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 Madeleine Aumont 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 visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing 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 intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.

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