Question: How do you apply enough candles on a birthday cake for one of the world’s oldest survivors of COVID-19? Answer: with 117 candles you can’t.
A French nun believed to be the second largest person in the world celebrated her 117th birthday on Thursday. There were plans for champagne and red wine, a party with her favorite desserts, a Mass in her honor, and other delights to toast Sister André’s exceptional longevity through two world wars and a recent coronavirus infection.
“It’s a great day,” David Tavella, communications manager for the nuns ’nursing home in the southern French city of Toulon, told the Associated Press. “She is OK. I went to see her this morning. She is very happy. I wanted him to tell her the time of day again ”.
It was full. It was hoped that some of Sister Andrew’s great-grandchildren would join a morning video call for her, and the Bishop of Toulon was to celebrate Mass in her honor.
“She was very proud when I told her. She said, “A Mass for me?” Tavella said.
Her birthday party menu included a foie gras starter, followed by a hood with fragrant mushrooms and wrapped with baked Alaska, the nun’s favorite dessert.
“Everything was washed with red wine, because he drinks red wine. It is one of their secrets to longevity. And a little champagne with dessert, because you have to toast 117 years, ”said Tavella.
As for packing dozens of candles into a cake, “we stopped trying it a long time ago,” he added. “Because even if we made big cakes, I’m not sure I had enough breath to blow them all. You will need a fire extinguisher “.
Sister André’s birth name is Lucile Randon. The Gerontology Research Group, which validates details of people believed to be 110 years old or older, listed as the second oldest known old person in the world, behind only a 118-year-old woman in Japan, Kane Tanaka.
Tavella told French media earlier this week that Sister André tested positive for coronavirus in mid-January, but that she had so few symptoms that she didn’t even realize she was infected. His survival was news in France and beyond.
“When everyone suddenly started talking about this story, I realized that Sister André was a bit like an Olympic flame on a tour around the world that people want to take, because we all need a little hope. right now, ”Tavella said.
Strangely enough, Tavella was celebrating his 43rd birthday on Thursday.
“We often joke that she and I were born the same day,” he said. “I never tell myself that he is 117 years old because he is very easy to talk to, regardless of age. Only when he spoke of World War I as if he was living it did I realize, “Yes, he lived it!”