Cancer stood still when they united in marriage

For Sandra, all things seemed like a dream – a heaven blessed dream! When Sandra Raquel Nogueira Pereira was diagnosed with cancer, Sandra thought that all her dream had crumbled.
Sandra was in love with her boy friend Sérgio Pereira da Silva for sixteen years and wished to marry him. It was when everything seemed so bright and buoyant that Sandra was diagnosed with cancer. Days of pain and fear followed; but Sandra didn’t lose hope. She shared her greatest dream with the hospital staff: to get married. As Paulo Coelho says in his renowned novel ‘Alchemist’, ‘the whole universe conspired to fulfill Sandra’s dream!”
Everyone in the hospital decided to help Sandra to realize her long cherished dream. Ticiane Oliveira, the hospital social worker, was in the forefront for organizing the wedding ceremony. Zilma Casimirio, a member of the Legion of Mary movement, collected all the documents.
During the ceremony, Sandra was given medications to alleviate pain. Before the wedding, the couple made their confessions to Father Joaquim Ivo Alves dos Santos, treasurer of the Diocese of Crato, and Father Antônio Romão, vicar of Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica. Marriage was jointly administered by the two priests.
The couple has three daughters. And the eldest daughter was the maid of honor, and she scattered rose petals along the path her mother was to travel. Sandra entered into the church in a wheel chair accompanied by her doctor and one of her two other children.
“We are here representing the Church that Pope Francis is calling for, a Church that goes out. We have to go to the people who are in need and we are here today to bless and ask for the sanctification of this couple” Father Alves dos Santos said during the ceremony.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the eldest daughter presented a statue of our Lady of Fatima, and the whole family consecrated themselves to her.
“I’ve already cried a lot, so today I’m not going to cry. I imagined what the wedding would be like, but this is even better than what I hoped for,” Sandra said when the marriage ceremony was over. Her words express the amount of joy she felt.