Vatican says Trevignano Madonna sightings not supernatural

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 27 - The Vatican's doctrinal watchdog on Thursday confirmed a March 6 decree by a local bishop asserting that alleged sightings of the Madonna at Trevignano north of Rome were not supernatural in nature and warning the faithful from organising or attending gatherings at the alleged apparition site.
    The Vatican Department for the Doctrine of the Faith recognised the "juridical validity" of the decree with which the bishop of Civita Castellana, Msgr. Marco Salvi, had declared on 6 March last that the alleged apparitions of Our Lady in Trevignano were not supernatural, and warned "the faithful to refrain from organising and/or participating in private and/or public meetings (be they prayer and/or catechetical) that would give as certain and indubitable the supernatural truth of the events of Trevignano".
    In his March 6 decree Msgr Salvi declared the non-supernatural nature of the alleged apparitions of the Madonna in Trevignano, on the shores of Lake Bracciano.
    He told a locally based self-styled soothsayer, Gisella Cardia, to stop calling people to a hillside there over which the fake apparitions allegedly take place on the third of every month.
    Cardia, a 54-year-old Sicilian woman 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 six years.
    She has passed on messages from the Madonna including ones on Satan brewing catastrophes including the destruction of Rome by an earthquake, and the takeover of the Catholic Church by Communism.
    The former businesswoman, who until a few years ago went by her birth name, Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, also set up a makeshift shrine, which was recently dismantled on Church and police orders, containing a statue of Mary she said wept blood.
    She bought it at the Bosnian apparition shrine of Medjugorje a few years ago.
    Cardia has also said she has been lucky in her efforts to feed the hundreds of visitors to the alleged apparition site, since she has found she is able to multiply gnocchi and pizza.
    Cardia has said she is undeterred, telling reporters amid milling faithful "the Madonna is with me".
    Making her monthly appearance at Trevignano on the third day of the month, when hundreds come to see Mary 'appear' above the Campo delle Rose, and ringed by bodyguards and video makers to keep journalists at bay, she said "I intend to keep staying here and I won't budge an inch because I'm in the house of God and I have the Madonna on my side".
    On May 17 the Vatican issued its latest cracked down on apparitions and blood-weeping statues saying only the pope can say what is supernatural or not. (ANSA).