Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Court Case Regarding Claims Madonna Figure Wept Blood
A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing 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 intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
