French nun Lucile Randon, the world’s oldest person, passed away at the age of 118. She assumed the name Sister Andre by the holy orders in 1944 and died in her sleep at a nursing home in Toulon, France.
Ms Randon, born in 1904 in southern France, saw two world wars and devoted her life to Catholicism. The secret of her long life was “Only the good Lord knows”, she told the reports.
Sister Andre was born when the Tour de France had only one stage and she also saw 27 French heads of state.
David Tavella, a spokesperson from her nursing home, shared the news of her death on Tuesday. “There is great sadness but… she desired to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s her liberation”, he said.
Sister Andre had a close relationship with her brothers. Once she shared her memories with the reporters and told them about one of her fondest memories, which was the safe return of her brothers from fighting at the end of the first World War.
She said as she recalled, “It was rare. In families, there were usually two dead rather than two alive.”
Even though she was blind and was dependent on a wheelchair, Sister Andre took care of other elderly people- some of whom were younger than her.
Last April, in an interview with the global news agency AFP, she said, “People say that work kills, for me work kept me alive, I kept working until I was 108.”
She said, in the same interview, that she would be better off in heaven, though she went on to enjoy earthly pleasures like eating chocolate and drinking a glass of wine every day.
She had been the oldest in Europe for a while, but she was registered as the world’s oldest person in the Guinness Book of Records last April, following the death of Kane Tanaka, a Japanese woman who was the world’s oldest person before Sister Andre until she died at the age of 119.
This was not her first time entering the records book, Sister Andre became the world’s oldest person to heal from Covid -19.
Born into a Protestant family, Sister Andre converted to Catholicism and was baptised when she was 26 years old.
15 years after she decided to join the Catholic Church, her desire to “go further” inspired her to join an order of nuns known as the Daughters of Charity.
She was allotted to a hospital in Vichy, where she served most of her working life for about 31 years.
Sister Andre told the reporters in one of her last interviews, “People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we shared all that, things would be a lot better.”
