World's oldest known person dies at age 118

The oldest person in the world, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118, according to her spokesman.

Randon, known as Sister Andre, was born in southern France on February 11, 1904, when World War I was still a decade away.

She died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon, spokesman David Tavella said. "There is great sadness but... it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it's a liberation," Tavella, of the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home, told AFP.

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.

French nun, Sister Andre, the world's oldest person, has died today at the age of 118. Born Lucile Randon, she converted to Catholicism in 1923 at the age of 19, later entering religious life with the Daughters of Charity in 1944.
May she Rest In Peace Amen ???? pic.twitter.com/kXme8tN4T2

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Guinness World Records officially acknowledged her status in April 2022. Randon was born in the year New York opened its first subway and when the Tour de France had only been staged once.

She grew up in a Protestant family as the only girl among three brothers, living in the southern town of Ales. One of her fondest memories was the return of two of her brothers at the end of World War I, she told AFP in an interview on her 116th birthday.

She converted to Catholicism and was baptised at the age of 26. Driven by a desire to "go further", she joined the Daughters of Charity order of nuns at the relatively late age of 41.

118 year old Catholic nun Sister Andre is now the world's oldest living person in the world. Sister Andre, who has already seen 10 Popes in her lifetime, is a convert to Catholicism. pic.twitter.com/P0UVrGjmBj

— Father V (@father_rmv) November 7, 2022

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 told AFP. But Toussaint warned that it was always possible an even older person had not yet made themselves known.

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.