🔗 Share this article Italian Visionary Confronts Deception Trial Over Claims Madonna Figure Shed Blood A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims 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 alleged deception. Key Charges and Details Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year. They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters. Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children. Further Allegations Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology. Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli. Background and Connected Incidents The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina. News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”. The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to 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 emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers. The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.