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A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees 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 deception.

Key Accusations and Particulars

Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.

“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 her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Connected Events

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority 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 appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.

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