“Since I came into this world, I have only seen wars and fights,” Sister André said in an interview as she celebrated her 118th birthday.
Sister André’s story of surviving Covid-19 in early 2021 was uplifting news during the coronavirus pandemic, with nursing homes particularly at risk. Nearly all of the 88 residents of her nursing home had become infected, and several eventually died.
“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,” Craig Glenday, the editor in chief of Guinness World Records, said in a statement.
The French nun became the world’s oldest known person after the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka, who died last year at 119, according to Guinness World Records. With Sister André’s death, the oldest known person, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates those thought to be 110 or older, is Maria Branyas Morera. She was born in the United States, lives in Spain and is 115.
Mr. Glenday said Sister André was “the fourth-oldest person ever authenticated.”
The French president’s office said in a statement that “she had become for the French a symbol of continuity and resistance, a memory of the century.”
Blind and in a wheelchair during her last years at the nursing home, Sister André at times felt lonely and dependent, she told French news outlets in interviews in recent years.
She was known to be a gourmet. For her 117th birthday, she ate foie gras, roasted capon, cheese and a dessert similar to a baked alaska. She said in several interviews that she enjoyed a daily diet of wine and chocolate.
“Perhaps her secret of longevity,” Mr. Tavella said.
