A 106-year-old American nun who became a minor celebrity after she appeared on television saying she is voting for Barack Obama is “startled and a bit anguished” by all the attention she is getting, her order said Monday.<\/p>\n
Sister Cecilia Gaudette, born on March 25, 1902, has decided to step out of the limelight and back into the comfortable obscurity that characterized her life before the media discovered that she will be one of the oldest Americans to vote.<\/p>\n
“Sister Cecilia is tired, she is startled and she is even a bit anguished by all the attention,” Sister Carmen Aymar, a deputy superior general at the convent in Rome where the voting nun lives, told Reuters by phone.<\/p>\n
“Now she wants to be left alone,” Aymar said.<\/p>\n
After Gaudette appeared on CBS News in the United States and on BBC radio saying she was voting for the first time since 1952 and that it would be for Obama, the convent was besieged by calls from reporters and media outlets across the world.<\/p>\n
“I’m encouraged by Senator Obama,” she told the BBC. “I’ve never met him, but he seems to be a good man with a good private life. That’s the first thing. Then he must be able to govern.”<\/p>\n
The story of Sister Cecilia, who was born in Manchester, New Hampshire and voting by absentee ballot over the Internet, was picked up by Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, and other media.<\/p>\n
“She is very proud to be an American,” Sister Aymar told Reuters. “She keeps an American flag in her office.”<\/p>\n
Aymar said Gaudette, a retired teacher of music and art, has been living in Rome for the past 50 years and before that taught in France and the United States.<\/p>\n
“She didn’t know she could vote by mail or internet and after someone told her she could, she decided to do it,” Aymar said.<\/p>\n
Gaudette said the last time she voted in an American presidential election was in 1952 and she cast her ballot for President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican.<\/p>\n
Gaudette is hard of hearing and her questions are relayed by another nun. She wears thick glasses and still uses a large, upright black enamel typewriter.<\/p>\n
“But she is a very determined woman and still very lucid,” said Aymar, who like Gaudette, is a member of the Religious Sisters of Jesus and Mary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It turns out one of the oldest Americans who will be voting this November is a nun. She’ll be exercising her own Faithful Citizenship — but not in a way that some bishops might like. From Reuters: A 106-year-old American nun who became a minor celebrity after she appeared on television saying she is voting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-politicians"],"yoast_head":"\n
106-year-old nun endorses Obama - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/106-year-old-nun-endorses-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"106-year-old nun endorses Obama - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It turns out one of the oldest Americans who will be voting this November is a nun. She’ll be exercising her own Faithful Citizenship — but not in a way that some bishops might like. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}