Gisella Cardia and her husband Gianni Cardia are accused of staging fake apparitions of ‘Our Lady of Trevignano’ and predicting “future cataclysms and disasters, such as earthquakes” in order to get the faithful to make donations.
The couple allegedly pocketed 365,000 euros thanks to the monthly apparitions, which brought hundreds of people to Trevignano Romano for several years.
Last year the Vatican Department for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed a decree by a local bishop asserting that the sightings were not supernatural in nature and warned the faithful from organising or attending gatherings at the ‘apparition’ site.
“Mrs Gisella Cardia welcomes the news of the indictment with serenity, knowing that this is a necessary step to finally clarify, at the appropriate forums, every aspect of the case involving her,” Cardia’s lawyer Solange Marchignoli told ANSA.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy that have involved her in recent months.
“She has full confidence in the work of the judiciary and remains calm.”
Cardia, a Sicilian woman who moved to Trevignano after receiving a two-year suspended sentence for bankruptcy when her ceramics firm went bust in Sicily in 2013, set up a makeshift shrine containing a statue of Mary she said wept blood.
She bought it at the Bosnian apparition shrine of Medjugorje a few years ago.
It was removed on police and Church orders.
She also held apparition events on the first day of every month which drew hundreds of people to a meadow outside the town on Lake Bracciano north of Rome where she said the Madonna appeared to them.
The woman passed on alleged messages from the Madonna including ones on Satan brewing catastrophes including the destruction of Rome by an earthquake, and the takeover of the Catholic Church by communism.
Cardia also said she had been lucky in her efforts to feed the hundreds of visitors to the alleged apparition site, since she had found she is able to multiply gnocchi and pizza.
ANSA
