Self-proclaimed Visionary Confronts Deception Trial Over Claims Madonna Figure Shed Blood

A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.

Central Accusations and Details

Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.

They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.

Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.

Additional Claims

Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.

Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.

Context and Related Events

Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.

News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed 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 purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.

Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.

The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.