Every third of the month, a multitude of devoted individuals congregate in a windswept field near Rome, firmly believing that a statue of the Virgin Mary sheds tears of blood.

They also come to see the 53-year-old woman who they believe has been performing miracles and healing the sick since she brought the statuette home from a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina, where many Catholics believe the Virgin Mary has been appearing since 1981.

Gisella Cardia claims the statue was responsible for a modern twist on Christ's miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding visitors to her home in Trevignano Romano from a never diminishing pizza.

Believers say Cardia is a visionary, claiming she predicted the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, her body marked by the stigmata of Christ's wounds from the crucifixion.

'Bleeding' statues

Chief among them is Cardia's conviction for bankruptcy fraud in 2013 and the charity the former businesswoman has set up to help the sick.

Although it has been swollen by donations – one man giving 123,000 euros ($134,000) – some say their generosity has been abused.

Then in March, a private detective said tests showed the statue's tears were animal blood. Prosecutors are now investigating Cardia, and the shrine she set up on a hill outside the village overlooking Lake Bracciano is threatened with demolition.

The local Catholic bishop, Monsignor Marco Salvi, has ordered his clergy to have nothing to do with the shrine and has asked the faithful to stay away.

A Church inquiry commission composed of independent experts is now looking into the phenomena.

But Father Salvatore Perrella, the influential head of a theological group in Rome dedicated to studying the Virgin Mary, did not hide his hostility.

"We have known for a while that this so-called visionary was absolutely not reliable," he told AFP.

"Trevignano should not be counted among the apparitions" of the Virgin Mary.

Yet the faithful continue to flock to Cardia's hilltop shrine with its altar, large blue cross, and an almost life-sized statue of the Virgin.

Since the "Virgin of the Tears" in Syracuse, Sicily began crying in 1953 – the only weeping statue acknowledged by a pope – Italy has seen countless strange or unexplained phenomena around religious statues.

The oldest and most celebrated is the cult of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, an ampoule of whose blood liquefies three times a year by popular tradition.

Beyond Italy, statues have been reported to secrete water, oil, or perfume as far afield as Akita in Japan and Naju in South Korea.

The Catholic Church says some are "scientifically inexplicable."

Scientists say many have rational explanations like condensation, varnish coming off, or chemical reactions between paint and the air.

Fervour

While Pope Francis warned against certain "apparitions" in June in a thinly veiled reference to the "Virgin of Trevignano," some of his predecessors have not been so reticent. John Paul II was supportive of another "miraculous" plaster statuette from Medjugorje which has been drawing crowds to Civitavecchia, an hour's drive from Trevignano, since 1995.

A family there claims to have witnessed it crying tears of blood on 14 separate occasions.

Although never officially recognized by the Vatican, fervor around the statue has not dampened over the years, with the statuette housed in a church on the edge of the port city north of Rome.

Photos displayed inside show her cheeks red with blood, with tents outside to welcome visitors, and vendors selling religious icons and effigies of the Virgin.

However, analysis of the blood has shown it came from a man. However, the men of the family who own the statue stubbornly refuse to take DNA tests.

On the other side of the Adriatic in Medjugorje, where both statues were made, locals firmly believe in the apparitions that have been happening there since 1981.

Every day Ivan Perutina's 20 workers make around 400 statues from a mix of powdered stone and synthetic resins renowned for their resistance to all weathers.

In the two decades he has been making them, Perutina told AFP that he has heard of "some things that were out of the ordinary."

Like the clients in Portugal who reported that a statuette smelled of roses and lavender even though "we had not added anything to it," he insisted. The little statues are solid, so nothing can be put inside them, a worker explained.

Asked if there was any way in which they could be tampered with, Perutina replied, "Oh no! God preserve us from that!"