A Catalan is the new world's oldest person

Source: Danie Franco en Unsplash

World's oldest person, French nun Sister André, dies aged 118

The world's oldest person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118.

Ms Randon - who assumed the name Sister André when she took holy orders in 1944 - died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon, France.

Born in 1904 in southern France, she lived through two world wars and dedicated much of her life to Catholicism.

"Only the good Lord knows" the secret of her longevity, she told reporters.

Born when Tour de France had only been staged once, Sister André also saw 27 French heads of state.

A spokesman from her nursing home, David Tavella, shared news of her death with reporters on Tuesday.

"There is great sadness but... it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it's a liberation," Mr Tavella said.

Sister André was said to have a close relationship with her brothers. She once told reporters one of her fondest memories was their safe return from fighting at the end of World War One.

"It was rare," she recalled. "In families there were usually two dead rather than two alive".

Despite being blind and reliant on a wheelchair, Sister André cared for other elderly people - some of whom were much younger than herself.

In an interview last April with the AFP news agency, Sister André said: "People say that work kills, for me work kept me alive, I kept working until I was 108."

During the same interview, she said she would be better off in heaven, but continued to enjoy earthly pleasures like eating chocolate and drinking a glass of wine every day.

She had been Europe's eldest for some time, but she entered the Guinness Book of Records last April as the world's oldest person following the death of Kane Tanaka, a Japanese woman who lived until she was 119 years old.

It was not her first time in the record books. In 2021 she became the oldest person to recover from Covid-19.

Sister André was born into a Protestant family, but later converted to Catholicism, before being baptised when she was 26 years old.

Driven by her desire to "go further", she joined an order of nuns known as the Daughters of Charity about 15 years after her decision to join the Catholic Church.

She was assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she spent most of her working life, about 31 years.

In one of her last interviews, she told reporters: "People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we shared all that, things would be a lot better."

Source: BBC News 

US-born 115-year-old Spaniard who survived Covid and exercised every morning until she was 105 becomes the oldest person in the world following the death of French nun who was 118

• The world's oldest person, Lucile Randon, died in her sleep this week
• Maria Branyas, who moved to Catalonia when she was a child, is now the oldest 
• She was born on March 4, 1907 to a Catalan family living in San Francisco

A 115-year-old American-born Spaniard who survived Covid two years ago has become the world's oldest person following the death of French nun Lucile Randon at the age of 118.

Maria Branyas became the oldest person ever to recover from the killer virus in May 2020.

And now the Spanish journalist's daughter, who was born in San Francisco but moved with her family to Catalonia when she was a child, has taken a new title following the death of Ms Randon at a nursing home in the southern French port city of Toulon.

Nursing home director David Tavella announced on Tuesday she had died in her sleep.

Ms Randon, who went by the name Sister Andre after joining a Catholic charitable order in 1944, also survived Covid last year and in the process took Maria's coronavirus record from her.

Maria, who has lived in sheltered housing in the Catalan town of Olot since she was 92, played the piano, read newspapers and exercised every morning until she was 105.

She became the oldest person in Spain in December 2019.

She was born on March 4, 1907 to a Catalan family who had emigrated to San Francisco a year earlier.

They took the decision to return to Spain in 1915 during the First World War after Maria's father Josep fell ill.

He ended up dying of tuberculosis on the ship they were crossing the Atlantic on, with his now-centenarian daughter injuring herself in a fall during the same voyage and later discovering she had lost her hearing in one ear.

Maria married Catalan doctor Joan Moret aged 23 in 1931 and went on to have three children with him and revealed in a recent interview she had 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

She has seen her parents, three siblings and one of her three children die, as well as her husband who passed away when he was 72.

In an interview with Catalan daily La Vanguardia in October 2019 she recalled watching TV for the first time on December 15, 1960 when King Baudouin of Belgium married Spanish aristocrat Fabiola de Mora and Aragon.

She also revealed bosses at her retirement home had put her on a diet, although they let her eat a small bit of cake on her birthday.

Monserrat Valdayo, the retirement home director, said at the time: 'Maria is in good health for her age, only that she's a little bit frightened after losing a lot of her hearing and sight.

'She finds it a little more difficult to come out of her room but is capable still of walking a little bit.'

In another interview around the same time, in which she admitted she had 'very bad memories' of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, Maria added: 'People live differently now to how they used to. Money dominates everything and with money you can get almost everything.'

Source: Daily Mail