by A statue of the Virgin Mary is the unlikely recipient of a DNA -Watten stave, after the blood seemed to cry. Results of the test make a miracle appear unlikely and a criminal case against the owner of the owner.
In 2014, “Mystic” Gisella Cardia bought a statue of the Virgin Mary of a religious site in Medjugorje, Bosnia. Cardia brought it back to Trevignano Romano, near Rome, Italy, and later made some unlikely claims over the statue, which made pilgrimages to the hilltop where it was housed. These claims include that the statue transferred its messages and had cried with tears of blood, two very unlikely activities for a ceramic statue. In addition, according to the Catholic news agency, the statue would “multiply food”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-Kik01O5C
The Catholic Church investigates such claims, many of which have been. In 2024, the diocese of Civita Castellana ruled that the events were “non-supernatural” after investigations involving church officials, a psychologist, theologians and “external experts”.
However, the church is not the only body that is investigating the miracle. Prosecutors in Civitavecchia investigate Cardia on potential fraud, after a private researcher claimed that blood on the statue was a pig.
DNA tests performed as part of the research have now concluded that the blood does not belong to a pig, per Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Before explaining the statue as a miracle, prosecutors said that the blood samples taken from the statue fits the genetic profile of Gisella Cardia.
The lawyers of Cardia told Corriere della Sera that it is still to be seen whether the DNA is single or mixed.
“If the profile is single, it means that it is only cardias and she said it there, so in this case we would go to court,” is a translation. “But if, as expected, the profile is mixed, this means that the DNA on the statue also contains Gisella’s DNA, we expect because she used the statue, kissing and treating it.”
The lawyer also refused to exclude a miracle.
“Who can say, do you know the DNA of the Madonna?” They added when he was asked if finding the blood of Cardia excludes a miracle. “Can anyone tell us? I have no answers. “
Religious artifacts and iconography are often praised as wonderful powers, or are falsified by fraudsters. In a similar case in 2008, a statue of Virgin Mary appeared to cry the blood of the church keeper it owned. In 1995, another statue of crying blood from a male person turned out to cry. In that case, the owner of the statue refused a DNA test.
The results of the DNA test – outsourced to a prominent forensic geneticist – is expected to be passed on to officers of Justice on 28 February.
