At 118, French nun, world’s second oldest person, dodged the Spanish flu and beat COVID
Sister Andre Randon, a French nun, celebrated her 118th birthday on Feb. 11 as the second-oldest living person in the world and the oldest living person in Europe having already beaten COVID-19.
Her 118th birthday wish is “to die soon,” AFP quoted her as saying.
The only person who is older than her is Kane Tanaka, a 119-year-old who lives in Japan.
Her standing in world age is according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people believed to be 110 or older, Catholic News Agency reported.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron, sent the beloved nun a greeting for her birthday.
She was born Lucile Randon on Feb. 11, 1904, in Alés, southern France in the year that the New York subway opened.
She converted to Catholicism at 19-years of age from Protestantism.
She served young children and the elderly at a French hospital until she became a nun at the age of 40.
That was when she joined the Daughters of Charity — founded by St. Vincent de Paul, in 1944.
She took the name Sister Andre in honor of her deceased brother.
In 2020, Sister Andre moved to the southern French city of Toulon.
There she resides in the Sainte Catherine Labouré retirement home.
But she tested positive for COVID-19 in 2021 and was isolated from the other residents but displayed no symptoms.
France’s BFM television asked her if she was scared of Covid.
“No, I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t scared to die … I’m happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else — join my big brother and my grandfather and my grandmother.”
POPE FRANCIS’ BIRTHDAY CARD
Pope Francis cent her a birthday card after she clocked up 11 years in 2019. Francis also sent her a card and a blessed rosary, which she uses every day.
When she turned 116 in 2020, the nun shared her “recipe for a happy life” naming prayer and a cup of hot cocoa every day.
Sister Andre has a single bed, a Virgin Mary statue and a radio she never turns on anymore, said AFP. The outside world, she says, is too stressful.
Most of the time she sits in her wheelchair, her head tilted to one side, her blind eyes shut.
Although she got COVID, she got through the deadly Spanish flu of 1918 unharmed.
