Widows Norma Pérez and Olga Pallares. / Credit: Victoria Cardiel/EWTN News

Vatican City, Sep 17, 2025 / 17:19 pm (CNA).

Norma Pérez, a widow for five years, and Olga Pallares, a widow for two, have experienced the piercing visceral pain of losing a loved one.

Friends for over 30 years, they have managed to cast a light on something as dark as the death of their husbands. “I know he is with God, without suffering, in a joy that is not of this world,” said Pérez, whose grief did not completely break her; on the contrary, she said it strengthened her faith.

‘A part of him has remained with us’

Together, the two friends participated in this week’s Jubilee of Consolation in Rome to bear witness that death does not have the last word. “A part of him has remained with us. We are not completely empty. We widows are filled with the other half of the other person who has passed away,” Pérez told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, just before participating in a vigil with Pope Leo XIV.

Pérez and Pallares met at Maranatha (“the Lord is coming” in Aramaic), a group that accompanies young couples in marriage preparation courses. “We gave retreats to strengthen marriages,” Pérez explained.

Through these activities, they taught others how to live the word of God as a couple, how to pray the rosary, and how to prepare to build a solid marriage based on faith.

But eventually, they became widows. Now, they dedicate themselves to “helping others until God calls me, too,” Pérez said.

These two friends have had very different experiences in their lives of faith, as different as their marriage experiences.

Pallares met her husband as a teenager, but they came from different worlds. “They were well off, I wasn’t,” she recalled. Her husband’s family always looked down on her, she said, but the couple managed to build a strong love despite the difficulties: “We fought every day for our love.”

Rejected by her in-laws 

One of the most painful experiences they experienced was his parents’ rejection of their daughters: “They never loved my daughters and even ended up disinheriting my husband. That was terrible.”

Despite family difficulties, Pallares and her husband shared a journey of faith and service. He even served as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist at the Avellaneda Cathedral in Argentina: “Rubén taught me that painful experiences are best navigated hand in hand with Jesus.”

In the final years of their marriage, illness entered their lives. Her husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which took him in just a few years: “Those were very hard times. I had to do everything: lift him, wash him, insert the IV, remove the IV… But God gave me incredible strength. I managed to lift him as if he weighed little, and he was twice my size.”

Despite the pain, faith sustained them until the end. Pallares recalled how her husband maintained a constant closeness to the Eucharist: “He was in front of Jesus 24/7 praying. He always told me: ‘We are you, Jesus, and me.’”

Pérez, on the other hand, wasn’t baptized when she met Juan. She grew up in a nonbelieving family. In fact, they were first married in a civil ceremony in 1999. But in 2008, everything changed.

Her husband, Juan, was diagnosed with prostate cancer after a biopsy and, fearful of undergoing surgery, opted for alternative and natural treatments.

“We were a couple who had been trying to have children for eight years, and the treatments weren’t successful. Then the disease hit,” she recalled.

Discovering God’s caress

Then, through suffering, she discovered God’s caress. “My faith truly began from zero. It was a total conversion, brought on by my husband’s illness,” she said in a calm voice.

It was then that they both began to draw closer to God and the Catholic community founded by Father Elías Cavero Domínguez in Argentina. “That’s when I began to understand what faith was and I was baptized. Everything changed for us: We were married in the Church in 2010. It was a profound transformation in our lives,” she said.

For the next 10 years, Juan experienced moments of relative stability. However, in 2018, the cancer had spread throughout his body, and the pain became unbearable. Despite this, they experienced what she describes as “a year of grace.”

From mid-2019 to 2020, Juan was pain free and able to spend time peacefully with his wife.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic further complicated the situation. In June 2020, they were both hospitalized, and despite health restrictions, she was able to be with him until the end. Juan passed away on Aug. 22, 2020.

“I went through everything with him and through prayer. I was even able to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at the exact moment of his departure. It was an immense consolation; I felt the Virgin Mary was coming to get him,” she recounted with emotion.

Their participation in the Jubilee of Consolation was another step in the spiritual healing process for these two Argentinians. In Rome, surrounded by people who had also experienced loss, they were able to experience Christian consolation.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.