As she blows out her 118 candles in Toulon, a wish crosses her mind: “Die quickly”. This Friday, Sister André celebrated her 118th birthday, not without a certain weariness. Sister André is considered the doyenne of Europe, although there is no official count. She is thirteen months the junior of the probable dean of humanity Kane Tanaka.
The day before her birthday, Sister André confided to AFP her wish to pass away: “I think of withdrawing from this affair, but they don’t want to,” she quipped, as if God had forgotten her in his call to leave. the world. In the meantime, she sprinkles her old age with her traditional porto-chocolate cocktail, in a small committee.
A string of visits
Sister André, whose real name is Lucile Rando, received a visit in the morning from the local deputy LR Germaine Levy, accompanied by the mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco whom she appreciates very much, especially since the day he knelt down. to tie his shoelaces.
Then, in the followingnoon, 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.
Having become blind and living badly from being deprived of her freedom in her wheelchair, the nun nevertheless keeps her desire to exchange views intact. 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. I, who had only lived in the Gard, in an ugly little town, was arriving in a radiant town”.
The Covid-19 just made her a little tired
Sister André was born in Alès. His parents from a Protestant family gave him a male name, in homage to one of his three brothers. She was a governess before returning to 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.
The nun has no health problems apart from muscle and joint stiffness linked to her immobility and has very few daily treatments, which is undoubtedly “one of her secrets of longevity”, reports her doctor Geneviève Haggai-Driguez. She easily survived the Covid-19 which just made her a little tired. “She goes through everything”, “takes over in an absolutely incredible way”, and “when we talk to her, she says: ‘oh, anyway, I had the Spanish flu’”.
