The Weeping Madonna of Trevignano Romano (Gisella Cardia)

Trevignano Romano sits on Lake Bracciano, about 30 miles north of Rome. About 6,000 people live there. In March 2016 one of them brought home a small ceramic statue of the Madonna, bought in Medjugorje. She was Gisella Cardia, born Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, a Sicilian. She later said the statue wept blood. And that the Virgin Mary, Jesus and God the Father were speaking to her.

The statuette stood in a glass case in a field she and her husband Gianni owned, on the hillside of via Campo delle Rose. On the 3rd of each month, it was said, blood ran from its eyes. The Madonna supposedly asked for the rosary at 3 pm. At the peak, hundreds came to pray. Followers said they saw the tears.

Cardia described more. Stigmata on her hands and feet. Crown-of-thorns marks around her head. Crosses of blood and writing in Aramaic on her walls. Leftover gnocchi and rabbit, reheated for 15 people, where "the amount never diminished no matter how much she dished up". A former follower recalled a video she filmed in her dark house: "you could see these lights and hear little bells in the distance". She told followers that angels were around her.

The messages came monthly. In September 2019 the Virgin supposedly warned of "a virus that would arrive from China".

3 September 2023. About 60 people stood in the field. At the moment of the supposed apparition, a Madonna statue made its entrance. It was attached to a drone, flying above the crowd. Fanpage concluded the seer was not involved. Most probably, a prank by outsiders.

April 2024. Cardia did not appear. Followers posted smartphone videos of a "pulsating sun" over the field, an echo of the 1917 miracle at Fatima.

In April 2023 Bishop Marco Salvi of Civita Castellana set up a commission. On 6 March 2024 he decreed constat de non supernaturalitate. Not supernatural. The decree cited "gaps" and "contradictions" in Cardia's interview, the "excessive simplicity" of the messages and "numerous theological errors". On 28 June 2024 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recognised "the juridical validity" of the decree. The town had already ordered the benches, glass case and roof taken down. The Council of State upheld that order in August 2024.

The Civitavecchia prosecutor's office opened a fraud inquiry. The RIS of Padua, the Carabinieri forensics unit, found the blood from 2016 "appears to belong to Gisella Cardia herself". In February 2025 geneticist Emiliano Giardina of Tor Vergata found female DNA matching Cardia. Her lawyer answered: "Who can say? Who knows the Madonna's DNA?"

Prosecutors counted about €365,000 collected from 2018 to 2023. A film director and former devotee, Luigi Avella, had given €123,000. In November 2025 Cardia and her husband were sent to trial for aggravated fraud. "I'm relieved, finally I can prove it's all true," she said. The defence says the inquiry took place "in a climate of evident prejudice".

The hearing has been postponed twice. It is now set for 10 October 2026. Nothing has been proven in court. Online, the messages continue. "Change yourselves, prepare for what must happen."