🔗 Share this article Self-proclaimed ‘Mystic’ Faces Deception Trial Over Claims Madonna Statue Wept Blood A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception. Key Charges and Particulars Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year. They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract contributions from their religious supporters. Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children. Further Claims Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating 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 opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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. Background and Related Incidents Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged 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 ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”. Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing 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 action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers. The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.