She survived two world wars, the Spanish flu and Corona.
Sister André died on Tuesday night in a retirement home in Toulon (France). André was 118 years and 340 days old and has been the oldest person in the world since April 2022. The native of France fell asleep peacefully, said David Tavella, spokesman for the retirement home. Next: “There is great sadness, but she wanted it, it was her wish, to get to her beloved brother. For them it is a liberation.”
André was born Lucile Randon on February 11, 1904 in Alès, southern France. Her family was Protestant but not very religious. It wasn’t until she was 19 that Randon discovered her enthusiasm for the faith and was baptized a Roman Catholic. Years later she joined the Order of the Vincentians and became a nun. André worked in a hospital in Vichy for three decades, taking care of orphans and the elderly.
Hands clasped in prayer and believing to the last. Sister André led a pious life
That the pious sister should reach a biblical age herself was not a matter of course. She experienced World War I (1914-1918) as a child and the outbreak of the Spanish flu as a teenager. She also survived the Second World War, whose gruesome fighting claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in France alone.
André was considered warm-hearted and humorous. When French journalists When she asked her about the secret of her long life on her 115th birthday, the nun replied mischievously: “God doesn’t want me.” In the last years of her life, André was dependent on a wheelchair, and she was blind and hard of hearing.
André was considered the oldest person in the world since Japanese Kane Tanaka died in April at the age of 119. Unbelievable: The deeply religious nun had survived a corona infection shortly before her 117th birthday.
At 122 years and 164 days, Jeanne Louise Calment held the world record for the longest verifiable life span. The French lived from 1875 to 1997.