Self-proclaimed Visionary Faces Deception Trial Over Allegations Madonna Statue Wept Bloody Tears

A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

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

Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.

Additional Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, 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 investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Related Incidents

The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to 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 combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.