The world's oldest person has died at 118 years old after surviving both World Wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. The Mirror reports that nun Lucile Randon, who was also known as Sister André, passed away in her sleep in Toulouse yesterday.
The Frenchwoman was was born in 1904 and took on the title of world's oldest person last year following the death of Kane Tanaka from Japan at 119. When her predecessor died, Sister André described taking the title as a "sad honour".
She added at the time: "I feel I would be better off in heaven, but the good Lord doesn't want me yet."
Born in the French town of Ales to Protestant parents, Sister André was raised alongside her two brothers but the family was separated when they went off to fight in the First World War. She then converted to Catholicism when she was 19 years old and became a nun eight years later, choosing the name Sister André in honour of one of her brothers who had passed away.
In her younger years, Sister André worked as a teacher and a governess, and spend much of World War Two looking after children. When the war ended, she travelled to Vichy to work in a hospital, where she spent 28 years supporting orphans and the elderly, before moving into a nursing home in 1979.
Sister André was dubbed as a "born survivor" and lived through the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. She then survived another pandemic when coronavirus swept the globe. In 2021, she shrugged off Covid with few symptoms, despite the virus killing ten residents at her nursing home in southern France. At the time, Lucile said: "I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t scared to die."
As well as holding the record the world's oldest Covid survivor, she also owned the world record for oldest living nun,
A spokesperson for her nursing home in Toulouse confirmed her death yesterday, stating: “There is great sadness but … it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s a liberation."
The oldest person ever was 122-year-old Jeanne Calment, also from France, who lived from 1875 to 1997.
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