FRANCE: 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 favourite dessert -- Baked Alaska.
Born Lucile Randon on February 11, 1904, Sister Andre said she didn't realise 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 realise it."
But David Tavella, spokesman for the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home, said she had "experienced a 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 favourite dessert: baked Alaska, washed down with a glass of port.
She says her favourite food is lobster and she enjoys a glass of wine. 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.
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." - AFP
