Lucille Randon, the world’s oldest person, dies at the age of 118 Obituary news

Randon, who became a nun in 1944, said work and caring for others were the main reasons for her longevity.

The oldest person in the world, French nun Lucille Randon, has died at the age of 118.

Randon, who took the name Sister Andre when she became a nun in 1944, died in her sleep Tuesday at the nursing home where she lived.

“There is great sadness but … it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s liberating,” said the spokesperson for the Saint-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in the southern French town of Toulon.

Born on February 11, 1904, Randón was the oldest living person in the world according to the Geriatric Research (GRG) Global Ranking List.

It has long been known as the oldest person in Europe, and became the oldest in the world after the death of Japanese Ken Tanaka at the age of 119 last year. Guinness World Records officially recognized its status in April 2022.

Randon was born the year New York opened its first subway, and World War I was still a decade away.

She grew up in a Protestant family and was the only girl among three siblings living in the southern town of Alice, France.

She told AFP, in an interview on her 116th birthday, that one of her fondest memories was the return of two of her brothers at the end of the war in 1918.

“It was rare, in families, to have two people dead instead of two alive. They both came back,” she said.

Randon worked as a governess in Paris—a period she once described as the happiest time of her life—to the children of wealthy families.

She became Catholic and was baptized at the age of 26.

Motivated by her desire to “get on”, she joined the Daughters of Charity Sisters when she was 41 years old.

Sister Andre was then transferred to a hospital in Vichy, France, where she worked for the next 31 years.

In later life, she moved to Toulon along the Mediterranean coast.

Her days in the nursing home were interspersed with prayers, meal times, and visits by residents and hospice workers.

She also received a steady stream of messages, almost all of which she responded to.

In 2021, she survived a bout with COVID-19.

“Work made me alive.”

Last year, Randon told reporters that her work and caring for others kept her passionate.

“People say work kills,” she told reporters in April last year in the home’s tea room. “For me, work kept me alive, and I kept working until I was 108.”

Although she was blind and needed a wheelchair, she was used to taking care of seniors much younger than herself.

“People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we share all of that, things will be much better,” she said at the same meeting with reporters.

Longevity expert Laurent Toussaint told AFP that, at 112 years old, Marie-Rose Tessier, a woman from the city of Vendée, is likely to be the oldest person in France.

But Toussaint cautioned that it is always possible that the older person has yet to announce himself.

Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 in Arles, southern France, holds the record for the oldest confirmed age of any human being.