Italian ‘Mystic’ Confronts Fraud Trial Regarding Allegations Madonna Statue Shed Blood

A so-called mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance 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 hoaxes.

“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 her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Related Events

Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. 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 alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.

Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.

The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.