The mystery of a Virgin Mary statue in Italy that ‘wept tears of blood’ has been solved.
In 2016, a woman identified as Gisella Cardia proclaimed that the Madonna di Trevignano was crying blood and giving her revelations to share with believers who flocked to receive its blessing and hand over tens of thousands of dollars in donations.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened a fraud investigation in 2023, ordering swab tests of the blood-stained porcelain cheeks that were previously speculated to have been pig’s blood.
The lab results surfaced last week, showing the blood matched the owner Cardia’s genetic profile.
However, her lawyer, Solange Marchignoli, said the DNA analysis must also show if it was a single-profile or mixed.
‘If the profile is single, it means that it is only Cardia’s and she put it there, so in this case we would go to trial,’ Marchignoli told Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera.
‘But if, as expected, the profile is mixed, it means that the DNA found on the statue also contains Cardia’s DNA, which we expect because she used, kissed it, and handled it.
Cardia has reportedly left her home in Trevignano and no one, not even her lawyer, knows whereabouts.
Cardia, who was previously convicted of bank fraud, arranged visits to see the ‘weeping’ statue every third day of the month.
She tucked the small statue inside a large blue case, positioned in front of a giant statue of Mary.
In 2022, locals from the town of Trevignano Romano who were skeptical of the bleeding Madonna called in a private investigator who met with the Italian military police.
The suspicious locals reportedly presented evidence suggesting the red liquid appearing from the statue’s eyes was pig’s blood.
Last year, the Catholic Church deemed the ‘miracle’ a fake. Their Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its first decree according to a new set of rules for vetting alleged Marian apparitions and spiritual phenomena.
It referred to a preliminary report from an investigation by the Diocese of Civita Castellana that found nothing supernatural about the statue.
It stated: ‘It is clear that it is
