Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened their own fraud investigation into Cardia in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue, which at the time was placed in a glass case on a hill in Trevignano Romano, a town overlooking Lake Bracciano, near Rome, had come from a pig.
A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood could face trial after a DNA test indicated the blood was hers.
“We are waiting to find out whether it’s a mixed or single profile.” She argued that while it was obvious there would be traces of Cardia’s DNA because she had “kissed and handled the statue”, it could have been mixed up with others, possibly even that of the Virgin Mary.
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed that the statue was transmitting messages to her, was last year declared a “fraud” by the Roman Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena.
Blood on statue at pilgrimage site near Rome came from woman declared ‘fraud’ by Roman Catholic church, test suggests.
