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Sister André would have turned 119 in February. She died in a home in Toulon. This photo was taken in 2021.

DLNews Staff:

Sister André died Tuesday night in a Toulon (France) retirement home. 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. So for them, it is a liberation."

Hands clasped in prayer and believing to the last. Sister André led a pious life.

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, caring for orphans and the elderly.

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 Spanish flu outbreak 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. However, when French journalists asked her about the secret of her long life on her 115th birthday, the nun replied mischievously: "God doesn't want me." André was confined to a wheelchair in the last years of her life, and she also had hearing problems and was blind.

André was considered the oldest person in the world since Japanese Kane Tanaka died in April at the age of 119. Unbelievable: The profoundly 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 lifespan. The French lived from 1875 to 1997.