The Church discredits the “apparitions” of a Virgin who “wept blood”

The Catholic Church ruled out the veracity of the alleged “apparitions” announced by a “visionary” who claimed to have seen the Virgin and witnessed her miracles in Italy, a case that attracted numerous pilgrims to a town north of Rome.

After an investigation of almost a year, the diocese of Civita Castellana, a municipality northwest of Rome, “decreed the non-supernatural nature of the events” that occurred in Trevignano Romano, announced in a statement this Wednesday.

For several years, Gisella Cardia, a 54-year-old Sicilian, claims to have skin marked by stigmata and to communicate directly with the virgin. The case, highly covered in the media, has attracted hundreds of pilgrims, who come to that town every month to pray to an image of the Virgin, near Lake Bracciano.

Given the magnitude of the case, the diocese began an investigation in April 2023, after numerous neighbors, fed up with the incessant coming and going of devotees, reported a “giant scam.”

After a “careful” evaluation of the case and “after listening to the testimonies at the scene and having consulted a commission of experts,” including a psychologist and an expert on the Virgin Mary, the diocese “decreed the non-supernatural nature of the events in question,” indicated its bishop, Marco Salvi.

The case spread by word of mouth and, thanks to its success, Gisella Cardia founded an association that earned her a juicy business fueled by individual donations.

Cardia, a former businesswoman convicted in 2013 of fraudulent bankruptcy, claimed that she had seen the image of the virgin crying tears of blood and that she had witnessed a multiplication of pizzas and gnocchi, as in the “miracle of the multiplication of bread” that was described in the Gospel.

The diocese’s decree, consulted by AFP, highlights “numerous theological errors” in the messages reported and the “contradiction” of their testimonies.

Since the lacrimations of the Virgin of Tears in Syracuse (Sicily) in 1953, the only one officially recognized by a pope with a message from Pius XII, there have been countless phenomena of the same type around statues of the Virgin Mary, Christ or saints. in Italy, where 74.5% of the 59 million inhabitants are Catholic.

In these cases, the Catholic Church remains very cautious and allows each diocese to decide individually.

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