An Italian woman who claimed a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood is heading to trial for fraud. Prosecutors allege Gisella Cardia and her husband, Gianni Cardia, orchestrated fake apparitions and made doomsday predictions to attract hundreds of pilgrims and a small fortune in donations in the lakeside town of Trevignano Romano. Cardia allegedly told followers that the statue warned her about everything from earthquakes that would destroy Rome to communists taking over the Catholic Church, the Guardian reports. She also claimed it multiplied food, a la Jesus, per WION. The couple collected roughly $423,000 in donations, with many pilgrims believing their contributions would help sick children.
Skepticism grew after a private investigator found that blood on the statue, which Cardia had purchased in 2016 from a pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was actually from a pig. Prosecutors then ordered a DNA test, which identified blood on the statue as belonging to Cardia herself. By then, the Catholic Church had already declared Cardia a fraud. She does have a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, per the Guardian. Her lawyer says she welcomes the trial as a chance "to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding, and controversy."