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ABC News: French nun Sister Andre claims title of world's oldest person.
www.abc.net.au
French nun Sister Andre claims title of world's oldest person
Posted 12h ago12 hours ago, updated 5h ago5 hours ago
French catholic nun Lucile Randon spoke to the press after becoming the world's oldest known person.(AFP: Simon Christophe)
A French nun who recently celebrated her 118th birthday with her traditional port-and-chocolate cocktail is now the world's oldest known person, following the death announced on Monday of a Japanese woman one year her senior.
Key points:
Lucile Randon, known as Sister Andre, was born in southern France on February 11, 1904, when World War I was still a decade away.
She now lives at a nursing home in Toulon along the Mediterranean coast, beginning every day with breakfast and then a morning mass, though she can no longer see.
"Then they put me at my desk where I stay busy with little things," she said.
"She's happy, she likes very much this attention," said the home's communications director David Tavella.
"But it's just another step, because her real goal is to overtake Jeanne Calment," a French woman who was reportedly 122 years old when she died in 1997.
Calment, too, said that chocolate and port were her secrets to a long life.
According to the Guinness World Records, Sister Andre is the third-oldest French person and the third-oldest European person ever recorded.
Sister Andre only moved into the retirement home 12 years ago, well into her centenarian years. (AFP: Simon Christophe)
She also holds the record for the oldest COVID-19 survivor.
After already living through the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, she tested positive for coronavirus in January 2021, and was quickly isolated in her retirement home to stop the virus spreading.
Defying the odds, she shook off the virus after three weeks with no symptoms or side effects other than a little tiredness, in time to celebrate her 117th birthday.
This year Sister Andre got a handwritten New Year's greeting from President Emmanuel Macron, among the many letters and boxes of chocolates sent by well-wishers.
"I was always admired for my wisdom and intelligence, but now people couldn't care less because I'm stubborn," she joked in an interview for her 118th birthday.
She worked as a teacher and governess in Paris before World War I, a period she once called the happiest time of her life.
After the war, she spent 28 years working with orphans and elderly people at a hospital in Vichy, in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region before taking her religious vows with the Daughters of Charity.
Previously the person deemed the world's oldest by the International Database on Longevity (IDL) and Guinness World Records was Kane Tanaka, whose death in Japan on April 19 was announced earlier this week.
With her death, "Sister Andre indeed becomes the oldest, and by far, since the next oldest is a Polish woman who is 115", said Laurent Toussaint, a computer scientist and amateur tracker for the IDL as well as the French institute of demographic studies.
Most centenarians are found in the world's so-called blue zones, where people live longer than average, such as Okinawa in Japan or on the Italian island of Sardinia.
But France, while not considered a blue zone, nonetheless has 30,000 centenarians, according to statistics institute Insee, with around 40 of them 110 or older.
AFP
Chocolate and wine key to longevity for French nun who is the world's oldest person
While 118-year-old Sister Andre is "happy" to take the title, the director of her nursing home says it is merely a step towards her goal of living longer than anyone before.
www.abc.net.au
French nun Sister Andre claims title of world's oldest person
Posted 12h ago12 hours ago, updated 5h ago5 hours ago
French catholic nun Lucile Randon spoke to the press after becoming the world's oldest known person.(AFP: Simon Christophe)
A French nun who recently celebrated her 118th birthday with her traditional port-and-chocolate cocktail is now the world's oldest known person, following the death announced on Monday of a Japanese woman one year her senior.
Key points:
- Sister Andre was born 10 years before World War I began
- She also holds the record for the oldest COVID-19 survivor at 116
- The previous record holder died aged 119 in mid-April
Lucile Randon, known as Sister Andre, was born in southern France on February 11, 1904, when World War I was still a decade away.
She now lives at a nursing home in Toulon along the Mediterranean coast, beginning every day with breakfast and then a morning mass, though she can no longer see.
"Then they put me at my desk where I stay busy with little things," she said.
"She's happy, she likes very much this attention," said the home's communications director David Tavella.
"But it's just another step, because her real goal is to overtake Jeanne Calment," a French woman who was reportedly 122 years old when she died in 1997.
Calment, too, said that chocolate and port were her secrets to a long life.
According to the Guinness World Records, Sister Andre is the third-oldest French person and the third-oldest European person ever recorded.
Sister Andre only moved into the retirement home 12 years ago, well into her centenarian years. (AFP: Simon Christophe)
She also holds the record for the oldest COVID-19 survivor.
After already living through the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, she tested positive for coronavirus in January 2021, and was quickly isolated in her retirement home to stop the virus spreading.
Defying the odds, she shook off the virus after three weeks with no symptoms or side effects other than a little tiredness, in time to celebrate her 117th birthday.
This year Sister Andre got a handwritten New Year's greeting from President Emmanuel Macron, among the many letters and boxes of chocolates sent by well-wishers.
"I was always admired for my wisdom and intelligence, but now people couldn't care less because I'm stubborn," she joked in an interview for her 118th birthday.
She worked as a teacher and governess in Paris before World War I, a period she once called the happiest time of her life.
After the war, she spent 28 years working with orphans and elderly people at a hospital in Vichy, in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region before taking her religious vows with the Daughters of Charity.
Previously the person deemed the world's oldest by the International Database on Longevity (IDL) and Guinness World Records was Kane Tanaka, whose death in Japan on April 19 was announced earlier this week.
With her death, "Sister Andre indeed becomes the oldest, and by far, since the next oldest is a Polish woman who is 115", said Laurent Toussaint, a computer scientist and amateur tracker for the IDL as well as the French institute of demographic studies.
Most centenarians are found in the world's so-called blue zones, where people live longer than average, such as Okinawa in Japan or on the Italian island of Sardinia.
But France, while not considered a blue zone, nonetheless has 30,000 centenarians, according to statistics institute Insee, with around 40 of them 110 or older.
AFP
