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A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims 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 Details

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

They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Further Allegations

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

Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.

“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, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Events

The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, 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 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 ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.

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