Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Court Case Regarding Claims Madonna Figure Shed Bloody Tears

A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.

Key Charges and Particulars

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

They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.

Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.

Further Allegations

Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.

Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.

Background and Related Incidents

The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing 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 intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.

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