French nun, Europe's oldest person, turns 117 after surviving Covid
TOULON: Europe's oldest person, French nun Sister Andre, turns 117 on Thursday after surviving Covid-19 last month and living through two world wars, with a special birthday feast including her favorite dessert -- Baked Alaska.
Born Lucile Randon on February 11, 1904, Sister Andre said she didn't realize
she had caught the coronavirus, which infected 81 residents of her retirement home in the
southeast city of Toulon, killing 10 of them.
"I'm told that I got it," the nun told AFP ahead
of her birthday. "I was very tired, it's true, but I didn't realize
it."
But David Tavella, spokesman for the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home,
said she had "experienced triple confinement: in her wheelchair, in her
room and without a visit".
"So her birthday, it reinvigorates us," he added, following the
deadly outbreak.
Sister Andre said she was not going to do anything special for her 117th
birthday but the home is planning a celebration for her.
There will be a special mass at the home, which has a dozen nuns, and the chef
is preparing a birthday feast of foie gras, capon fillet with porcini mushrooms
and Sister Andre's favorite dessert: baked Alaska, washed down with a glass of
port.
She says her favorite food is lobster and she enjoys a glass of wine.
"I drink a small glass of wine every day," she said.
Born in Ales in a Protestant family, she grew up as the only girl among three
brothers.
One of her fondest memories was the return of two of her brothers at the end of
World War I.
"It was rare, in families, there were usually two dead rather than two
alive. They both came back," she told AFP last year, on her 116th
birthday.
She converted to Catholicism and was baptized at the age of 26. She joined the
Daughters of Charity order of nuns at the relatively late age of 41.
Sister Andre was then assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she worked for 31
years and then spent 30 years in a retirement home in the French Alps before
moving to Toulon.
She is the second-oldest living person in the world, according to the
Gerontology Research Group, after Japanese woman Kane Tanaka, who is 118.
Asked what she would say to young people, Sister Andre said: "Be brave and
show compassion."
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