Mamma Ebe, the 'Holy Woman of Carpineta', dies at 88

Gigliola Giorgini, known as 'Mamma Ebe', a controversial figure and protagonist of judicial news and also known as the 'Saint of Carpineta', died yesterday at the age of 88 at the Infermi Hospital in Rimini.

The death – reports the Rimini edition of the 'Corriere di Romagna' – is linked to the effects of a neoplasm: today – explains the newspaper – the funeral, which will be celebrated in Sant'Ermete in the Rimini area.

Born in Pian Del Voglio, in the Bologna area, in 1933, 'Mamma Ebe' was called the 'Holy Woman of Carpineta', for her role at the helm of the congregation 'Pia Unione di Gesu' Misericordioso'. Together with several 'followers' she received people who trusted in her alleged ability to heal with medicines, placebos and prayers: one of the centers where she received was a villa in the Cesena hamlet of Carpineta.

Giorgini's legal career began in the 80s, when she ended up in the dock for her work as a 'healer', receiving a six-year prison sentence on appeal in May 1985 in Turin. In January 2002, the woman was arrested together with her husband in the villa in Carpineta, in a blitz by the Police and the Guardia di Finanza who had executed 28 precautionary custody orders at the end of a long investigation by the Forlì Prosecutor's Office which had formulated various charges: from criminal association to the continued and abusive practice of the health profession, from ideological forgery in prescriptions to continued fraud in complicity to the detriment of a public body, from kidnapping to child abuse, from fraud for abject reasons to the detriment of people suffering in body and soul to the abusive practice of a medical clinic.

The activity of 'mamma Ebe', however, did not stop. In 2010 she was accused of aggravated fraud and unauthorized practice of medicine: in Pistoia two trials were opened: one never concluded due to the statute of limitations and one, instead, with a sentence of eight and a half years in prison.

In 2017, the woman was then placed under house arrest after being sentenced, definitively, to four years in prison for criminal association aimed at fraud and unlawful practice of the medical profession. The investigations conducted by the Forli Police found that inside a villa in Sant'Ermete, in the Rimini area - where she had lived since 2014 - there was a mini community of followers at work, busy carrying out the most disparate tasks to allow 'Mamma Ebe' to continue to receive those who turned to her.