The world's oldest person, Frenchwoman Sister André died on Tuesday morning at her rest home in Toulon, southern France, her spokesman announced on Tuesday evening. She was 118 years old.
"She passed away at 2 in the morning," said David Tavella, who is in charge of communications for the retirement home where she stayed. "There is a great sadness, but she wanted it. It was her desire to be with her beloved brother again. For her it is a liberation.”
There is no official body that awards the titles of oldest man or woman, but specialists agreed that Sister André was the oldest living person in the world to date whose birth records had been verified.
The Guinness Book of Records also awarded her that distinction on 25 April 2022, following the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka at the age of 119.
Sister André, who was born Lucile Randon, joined a Catholic order in 1944.
For several years, she had not hidden the fact that she felt a certain weariness: she wanted to "retire from this business" but "the good Lord cannot hear me," she confided to someone who spoke at length with her in January 2022. Not long before that, in 2021, she had survived a COVID-19 infection.
Confined to a wheelchair and blind, Sister André, born Lucile Randon on 11 February 1904 in Alès (Gard), regretted losing some of her physical abilities.
"They say work kills, but it was work that kept me going, I worked until I was 108," she said in April 2022, when she was identified as the oldest person in the world, after being the oldest in France and then in Europe.
