MARSEILLE, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The world’s oldest known person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118, a spokesman of a nursing home announced Tuesday.
Randon, known as Sister Andre, was born in southern France on Feb 11, 1904, when World War I was still a decade away.
She died in her sleep at the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in Toulon, spokesman David Tavella said.
The sister was long feted as the oldest European, before the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka aged 119 last year left her the longest-lived person on Earth.
Guinness World Records officially acknowledged her status in April 2022.
She grew up in a Protestant family as the only girl among three brothers, living in the southern town of Ales.
Sister Andre, who converted to Catholicism and was baptised at the age of 26, worked as a governess in Paris — a period she once called the happiest time of her life — for the children of wealthy families.
Driven by a desire to “go further”, she joined the Daughters of Charity order of nuns at the relatively late age of 41.
Sister Andre was then assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she worked for 31 years before moving to Toulon along the Mediterranean coast.
In 2021 she survived catching Covid-19, which infected 81 residents of her nursing home.
It is likely that France’s new oldest person is now 112-year-old Marie-Rose Tessier, a woman from Vendee, longevity expert Laurent Toussaint said.
Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 in Arles, southern France, at the age of 122 holds the record for the oldest confirmed age reached by any human. — NNN-AGENCIES
