A Catholic bishop on Thursday advised
the faithful not to attend monthly meetings in a town near Rome
before a statue of the Madonna while it investigates claims by
its owner that it weeps blood and that the Virgin Mary makes
apparitions there.
Civita Castellana Bishop Marco Salvi also told priests not to
comment on the supposed supernatural events at the Lake
Bracciano hillside town of Trevignano, where the statue is set
in a glass case.
The owner, self-styled soothsayer Gisella Cardia, holds meetings
with hundreds of faithful before the statue on the third day of
each month.
Last month she said she said was undeterred by probe stemming
from a complain to police and an order to demolish the statue's
case.
"I won't budge an inch because I'm in the house of God and I
have the Madonna on my side," Cardia said.
As well as pointing out the apparitions, Cardia tells the
assembled crowd what the Virgin is telling her, usually messages
of hope.
Cardia, a 53-year-old who moved to Trevignano after receiving a
two-year suspended sentence for bankruptcy when her ceramics
firm went bust in Sicily in 2013, has been hosting the
apparition events for the last five years.
The former businesswoman, who until a few years ago went by her
birth name, Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, said she bought the statue
at the Bosnian apparition shrine of Medjugorje a few years ago.
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