Some people are blessed with extraordinarily long lives, and a lucky few even get to hold the record for the world’s oldest living person. These super seniors are a link to a long-ago past that few others remember, and an inspiration to us all.
Sadly, the previous record holder has now passed on: Sister André, a French nun, has died at the age of 118.
Sister André was born on February 11, 1904 as Lucile Randon, but changed her name when she became a nun in 1944, according to Guinness World Records.
In addition to her decades of religious service, she also worked as a teacher, a governess, looked after children during World War II, and spent 28 years working with orphans and the elderly at a hospital in Vichy.
But most of her life has been devoted to service as a Catholic nun, residing in Toulon in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region of France. She was named an honorary citizen in 2019.
As Sister André aged well past 100, she began to set a number of world records. She was the world’s oldest living nun, and received a personal letter and rosary from Pope Francis.
In 2021, she made headlines after contracting COVID-19. While the coronavirus is especially serious for the elderly, Sister André survived and recovered in about three weeks, just before her 117th birthday.
Despite that ordeal, the nun said she wasn’t afraid to die. “She kept telling me, ‘I’m not afraid of Covid because I’m not afraid of dying,’” David Tavella, a spokesman at her nursing home,, said in an interview at the time, according to the New York Times.
She was the world’s oldest COVID-19 survivor, and is notably one of the few people to have lived through two pandemics, having survived the Spanish flu of 1918.
And in April 2022, she received the Guinness World records as the oldest person living (female) and oldest person living, after the death of previous record holder Kane Tanaka of Japan.
Sister André was said to have a “bright outlook on life” and enjoyed a “daily diet of wine and chocolate,” according to Guinness editor-in-chief Craig Glenday.
Sister André died on January 18, just weeks before her 119th birthday. But no one can say that she didn’t live a long, full life.
By the end, she was in a wheelchair and blind, and had made peace with death, expressing a desire to be with her brother, who had died.
“There is great sadness but… it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s a liberation,” Tavella told AFP.
“How incredible that we shared the same air as someone who was born just a couple of months after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight – and a few months before the New York subway system opened,” wrote Craig Glenday in a tribute. “We’d only had two Olympics Games by the time she was born in 1904, and only one Tour de France. Teddy Roosevelt was US President and Alfred Balfour was British Prime Minister!”
“It’s difficult to fathom that someone born before the patenting of plastic, zips or even bras was alive well into the 21st century, and robust enough to beat COVID-19,” he added.
Glenday said that Sister André was determined to set the all-time oldest-person record, topping fellow Frenchwoman Jean Calment, who still holds the record at 122 years and 164 days. Sister André was about three years short of the all-time record.
Still, she can rest in peace knowing that she lived a very long life helping others, and will go down as the fourth oldest person in history.
“While she may not have reached quite so advanced an age as her 122-year-old counterpart, she nevertheless lived a remarkably long and varied life. It’s been an honour to record her story in the pages of the Guinness World Records book,” Glenday wrote.
In the course of her life, Sister André witnessed a lot of heartbreak and suffering in the world: “Since I came into this world, I have only seen wars and fights,” Sister André said in an interview around her 118th birthday.
And near the end, she offered a plea for peace in the world: “People should help each other and love each other instead of hating,” she told journalists, per AFP. “If we shared all that, things would be a lot better.”
Rest in peace, Sister André. What an incredible, long life. Please share this story to pay tribute to this remarkable nun.
