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A so-called mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.

Central Charges and Details

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

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

Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged 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 charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Events

Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

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 save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.

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