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

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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.

Context and Connected Incidents

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

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