French nun Lucile Randon, who is believed to be the world’s oldest person has died. She was 118, her retirement home announced Tuesday.
According to her retirement home, Randon died in her sleep at her nursing home near Toulon, France, on Tuesday at 2 a.m. CET. Her birthday was less than a month away.
"It is with immense sadness and enormous emotions that I have just learned the death of Sister André," Hubert Falco, the French Secretary of State for development, said in a statement. "She was the dean of humanity and it was thanks to her remarkable age that she conquered the hearts of all French people."
Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters.
Lucile Randon, known as Sister Andrée, was born in southern France on February 11, 1904, the same year New York City opened its first subway and about a decade before the First World War broke out.
In 2021, Randon survived COVID-19 after testing positive for the virus in mid-January. It only took her three days to recover.
Sister André, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, did not even worry when she received her diagnosis, in fact, she told the French newspaper Var-Matin that she “didn’t even realize I had it.”
U.S. & World
On April 2022, Guinness World Records officially acknowledged her status as the oldest living person following the death of Kane Tanaka on April 22, who died at age 119.
