Time.news – Sister André, Dean of Europe and Deputy Dean of Humanity, celebrates 118 years with a small party in the center for the elderly in Toulon (South).
It is a busy day for Sister André, who to the media he ‘confessed’ his tiredness, his desire to leave this land.
“I think I’m retiring from this story but they don’t want me there” joked the oldest woman in Europe, only 13 months younger than the decan of humanity, the Japanese Kane Tanaka, 119 years and 40 days.
At the Lucile Rando registry office, this morning she received a visit from the local deputy Germaine Levyof Les Républicains (right), and of the mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco, whom Sister André has greatly appreciated since he knelt to tie his shoes.
In the afternoon in the Ehpad Sainte Catherine Labouré, he will celebrate with a chocolate cake, a few close friends and the archbishop of the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, Monsignor Dominique Rey.
Born in Alès into a Protestant family, her parents gave her a male name in memory of one of her three brothers.
She was a housekeeper, an au pair in Paris until the age of 40, almost 80 years ago, experiences that she remembers as “the happiest time of my life, in a radiant city”.
She entered religious orders at a late age, in the company of the Daughters of Charity, and was in service until the end of the 1970s to then spend 30 years in a structure for the elderly in Savoy and subsequently in another in Toulon, where she lives with about fifteen sisters.
She contracted Covid-19 which only tired her a little and reminded her of the Spanish flu. “He gets through it all, he recovers in an absolutely incredible way,” said his doctor, Geneviève Haggai-Driguez.
Sister André has become blind and lives the deprivation of freedom badly, confined to a wheelchair, but she always loves contact with others.
But at 118 she has no major health problems, with the exception of muscle and joint stiffening linked to her immobility, therefore she is subjected to few daily treatments, “one of the secrets of longevity” concluded her doctor.