French nun, world's oldest person, passes away after 118 years

Lucile Randon was born in southern France on 11 February 1904, a decade before the outbreak of the First World War. She died peacefully in her sleep earlier this week.

Sister André on the eve of her 117th birthday. AFP - NICOLAS TUCAT

Sister André was long recognised as the oldest European, before the death of Japan's Kane Tanaka last year at the age of 119 left the French nun the oldest surviving person on Earth.

The Guinness World Records organisation officially acknowledged her status in April 2022.

Lucile Randon was born in 1904, the year New York opened its first subway and when the Tour de France cycle race had been staged only once.

She grew up in a Protestant family in the southern town of Ales.

Both of her brothers fought in World War I, and both survived.

A convert to Catholicism

She worked as a governess in Paris -- a period she once called the happiest time of her life -- for the children of wealthy families.

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.

Sister André was then assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she worked for 31 years.

In later life she moved to Toulon on the Mediterranean coast.

She ended her days in a local nursing home.

'Work kept me alive'

Randon told reporters last year that her work and caring for others had kept her spry.

"People say that work kills, for me work kept me alive, I kept working until I was 108," she told reporters in April last year.

Although she was blind and relied on a wheelchair, she used to care for elderly people much younger than herself.

"People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we shared all that, things would be a lot better," she said.

The Catholic nun consistently rejected requests for locks of hair or DNA samples, saying that "only the good Lord knows" the secret of her longevity.

France's next oldest person is 112-year-old Marie-Rose Tessier, a woman from the west-central Vendée region.

It remains possible that an even older person has 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.