Carmena Vella boarded a plane for the first time in her life when she was aged 90, an adventure that she repeated when she turned 95. On her 100th birthday, she tells Sarah Carabott that she would not mind giving it another go.

The formula for peaceful longevity is to mind your own business, be content with what you have and pray for everyone, Carmena Vella yesterday told anyone who asked about her secret.

“My advice is for everyone to mind their own business and remain at peace with all. If you don’t trouble or hate anyone, everyone will love you back. That’s how I was brought up,” the 100-year-old from Qala told this newspaper.

The Gozitan village yesterday celebrated the centenarian’s birthday, whose advice to her younger self would have been to start off the day by praying for all people, because “everyone from the sky downwards is human and equal”.

Ms Vella’s day started with Mass, which was said by Bishop Mario Grech, and attended by Gozitan politicians including Gozo Minister Anton Refalo, Parliamentary Secretary Justyne Caruana and MPs Chris Said and Giovanna Debono.

Ms Vella was born in World War I, lived through the second one and saw Malta gain independence and freedom.

War taught her many lessons, mainly to appreciate what she has.

“We had nothing during the war, but thank God, we always had something to eat. During the war and soon after, we lived in Qala with grandma Ġanna, whom I always remember sitting on a mattress with her rosary beads clutched in her hands.”

Gozo bishop Mario Grech said Mass at the Qala Parish Church, marking Carmena’s centenary.

Despite still a toddler in those years, she recalls a family acquaintance, Salvu from Rabat, who would bring over some sugar and matchsticks. Her mother would hand out sugar cubes, which “looked just like today’s sweets”, for Ms Vella and her siblings to munch on. She would then keep the rest to add to brewed coffee the following morning.

The rosary beads topped off Carmena’s cake decorated with 64 butterflies – one each for her nine children, 24 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

“During World War II, I was already married and a mother. They were tough times, but they too passed, thank God.

“Through it all I made sure that my children were always close and I encouraged them to pray… and I would tell anyone to do the same: pray and keep your family together.

“The family is like the Church: without unity and prayer, there would no blessing.”

Ms Vella is known for the rosary beads that she carries everywhere with her, and she even makes sure that whatever she is wearing has a side pocket where she can keep the string of beads.

The rosary beads are so synonymous with Ms Vella that they even took centre stage on a cake that her granddaughter Josette Grioli made for yesterday’s occasion.

Ms Vella also took the rosary beads with her when she first went abroad aged 90. She travelled to Australia to visit four of her nine children, a trip she repeated five years later, when she met her great-granddaughter Isabelle Agius, then aged two. Yesterday, Isabelle recited two prayers in Maltese which her great-grandmother had taught her when she visited Down Under. Ms Vella has 24 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and has just become a great-great-grandmother of one.

Isabelle Agius, seven, yesterday recited two prayers that her great-grandmother taught her in Australia.

Despite losing her sight to a medical condition some 40 years ago, Ms Vella has remained a “sharp and very strong-willed woman”, according to her granddaughter Stephanie Azzopardi.

“She is always up and about, and when we were young, we didn’t dare do anything in her presence that we were not meant to, because she would always smell us out, despite being blind.

“Her stamina has shone through for as long as I remember, and we all still take her advice seriously,” her granddaughter added.