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A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also charged with issuing 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 inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office 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 appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.

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