ROME, Oct 13: A 106-year-old American nun was ‘startled and a bit anguished’ over the attention she was getting after appearing on television saying she was voting for Barack Obama, her order said on Monday.

Sister Cecilia Gaudette, born on March 25, 1902, has decided to step out of the limelight and back into the comfortable obscurity that characterised her life before the media discovered that she will be one of the oldest Americans to vote.

“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, said.

“Now she wants to be left alone,” Aymar said.

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.

“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.”—Reuters