🔗 Share this article Italian ‘Mystic’ Faces Fraud Court Case Regarding Allegations Virgin Mary Figure Wept Bloody Tears A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud. Central Accusations and Details Gisella Cardia, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year. They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters. Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children. Additional Allegations Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism. Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli. Context and Related Events The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje. Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French 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 “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”. The pontiff 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 intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers. The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.