AFP
NOS News•
She was born in 1904, three days after the Russo-Japanese War, the first major war of the twentieth century, broke out. And a few months later, the second Tour de France was held in her native France.
It is a fragment of what the French nun Lucile Randon went through in her life. On Tuesday evening, the mayor of her city of Toulon, Hubert Falco, announced via Facebook that she had died in her sleep in a retirement home at the age of 118.
Only three people older
Randon, better known as Sister André, was the oldest known person on earth since April last year. She died just a month before her 119th birthday.
Only three others are known to have lived longer than Randon: the also French Jeanne Calmen (122 years old), the Japanese Kane Tanaka (119) and the American Sarah Knauss (119).
Sister Andre
Randon was a teacher in her younger years. It was only after she turned forty, towards the end of the Second World War, that she joined a religious order, after which she went through life as Sister André. In recent years she has been in a wheelchair and almost blind. She made the news two years ago when she recovered from a corona infection, despite her advanced age.
Mayor Falco of Toulon describes Randon in his Facebook post as “the doyen of humanity”. Falco: “She had moved with the times, incredibly modern and always openly told me what she thought of this new century”.
With Randon’s death, 115-year-old Maria Branyas Morera, who lives in Spain, is now the world’s oldest living person.
