Here’s something remarkable: a French religious sister who is 116 years old — believed to be the second-oldest woman in the world — has survived COVID and will celebrate her 117th birthday Thursday.
From the AP:
French media report that Lucile Randon — known as Sister André — tested positive for the virus in mid-January in the southern French city of Toulon. But just three weeks later, the nun is considered recovered.
“I didn’t even realize I had it,” she told French newspaper Var-Matin.
Sister André, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, did not even worry when she received her diagnosis.
“She didn’t ask me about her health, but about her habits,” David Tavella, the communications manager for the care home where the nun, told the newspaper. “For example, she wanted to know if meal or bedtime schedules would change. She showed no fear of the disease. On the other hand, she was very concerned about the other residents.”
UPDATE: The Washington Post has more on her background. Snip:
Sister André, originally named Lucile Randon, was born on Feb. 11, 1904, in Alès, a town in the Occitanie region of southern France. She grew up in a nonreligious Protestant family and worked at a young age as a governess in Marseille and a tutor in Paris, according to Le Parisien.
She converted to Catholicism at 19, and at 25, she began working at a hospital. For 28 years she took care of elderly people and orphaned children. In 1944, she joined the Daughters of Charity to become a nun at the age of 40. She took on the name Sister André in honor of her deceased brother, and in 2009, she moved to the retirement home, Le Parisien reported.
When Sister André turned 115, Pope Francis sent her a personal letter and a blessed rosary, according to FAMVIN, a religious news service.
After her diagnosis with the coronavirus in mid-January, Sister André was asymptomatic. Blind and in a wheelchair, the retired nun who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic and both world wars told France’s BFM TV that she wasn’t scared when she tested positive because she is not afraid to die.
And see a video of this remarkable nun below.
