Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Deception Trial Regarding Allegations Madonna Statue Wept Bloody Tears

A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.

Key Charges and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.

Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.

Further Claims

Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.

Context and Connected Incidents

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

Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.

The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.