Europe’s oldest person and also the second oldest in the world, Sister André is celebrating her 118th birthday today in the French city of Toulon.
Sister André who is the Doyenne of the French and a Toulonnaise, is blind and retired on her wheelchair, will celebrate her birthday with her traditional Porto-chocolate cocktail, AFP reports.
“I can’t stand them anymore, the guests, I’m less friendly”, the nun explained very recently, during an investigation into these super-centenarians who defy science: “I was always admired for my wisdom and my intelligence, and now people make fun of me because I’m refractory”.
“I’m thinking of withdrawing from this business, but they don’t want to,” she insisted with her caustic humour, seeming to regret that God had forgotten her in his call to leave the world.
Sister André, born Lucile Randon on February 11, 1904 in Alès (Gard), is one of the oldest women in France, even in Europe. She is just 13 months younger than the oldest known to mankind, Japan’s Kane Tanaka, who turned 119 in early January.
According to the report by AFP, in preparation for her big day, Sister André will receive a visit from local deputy Germaine Levy (LR), accompanied by the mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco, whom she greatly appreciates, especially since the day he knelt down to tie her shoelaces.
Then, in the afternoon, for the birthday chocolate cake, it will be the archbishop of the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, Dominique Rey, who will visit him, David Tavella, in charge of the communication from the Sainte-Catherine-Labouré accommodation establishment for the elderly and dependent (Ehpad), who is his confidant, “his impresario” as he likes to call himself.
Gardoise, Toulon native by adoption
As in the period that she considers the happiest of her life, when she was an au pair in Paris: “I was 40 years old, it was 80 years ago. Paris was magnificently beautiful. Me who had only lived in the Gard, in an ugly little town, I arrived in a radiant town”.
Coming from a non-practicing Protestant family, Sister André, written in the masculine in homage to one of her three brothers, was a governess before entering orders late in life, within the company of the Daughters of Charity.
She worked until the end of the 1970s and then spent 30 years in an Ehpad in Savoie before arriving in the Toulon establishment where she rubbed shoulders with around fifteen other nuns at the morning service. She still has grand-nephews and many great-grand-nephews, some of whom will come to see her on Saturday.