French nun Sister Andre was three weeks from her 119th birthday. Photo: NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
The world's oldest person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118.
Randon - who assumed the name Sister André when she took holy orders in 1944 - died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon, France.
Born in 1904 in southern France, she lived through two world wars and dedicated much of her life to Catholicism.
"Only the good Lord knows" the secret of her longevity, she told reporters.
Born when Tour de France had only been staged once, Sister André also saw 27 French heads of state.
A spokesman from her nursing home, David Tavella, shared news of her death with reporters on Tuesday.
"There is great sadness but... it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it's a liberation," Tavella said.
Sister André was said to have a close relationship with her brothers. She once told reporters one of her fondest memories was their safe return from fighting at the end of World War I.
"It was rare," she recalled. "In families there were usually two dead rather than two alive".
Despite being blind and reliant on a wheelchair, Sister André cared for other elderly people - some of whom were much younger than herself.
In an interview last April with the AFP news agency, Sister André said: "People say that work kills, for me work kept me alive, I kept working until I was 108."
During the same interview, she said she would be better off in heaven, but continued to enjoy earthly pleasures like eating chocolate and drinking a glass of wine every day.
She had been Europe's eldest for some time, but she entered the Guinness Book of Records last April as the world's oldest person following the death of Kane Tanaka, a Japanese woman who lived until she was 119 years old.
It was not her first time in the record books. In 2021 she became the oldest person to recover from Covid-19.
Sister André was born into a Protestant family, but later converted to Catholicism, before being baptised when she was 26 years old.
Driven by her desire to "go further", she joined an order of nuns known as the Daughters of Charity about 15 years after her decision to join the Catholic Church.
She was assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she spent most of her working life, about 31 years.
In one of her last interviews, she told reporters: "People should help each other and love each other instead of hating. If we shared all that, things would be a lot better."
The oldest person who ever lived is believed to have been Jeanne Louise Calment, also of France, who was born on 21 February 1875 and lived to be 122 years 164 days old.
"Ms Randon clearly had a bright outlook on life, claiming that her aim was to outlive fellow Frenchwoman Jean Calment, which she tackled by enjoying a daily diet of wine and chocolate," Guinness editor Craig Glenday said in a statement.
"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."
- BBC w/RNZ