Already champion of France, Sister André won the title of world champion on Monday.

This 118-year-old French nun has become the new probable dean of Humanity, after the death of Kane Tanaka, a 119-year-old Japanese woman.

Kane Tanaka, who was recognized as the current Dean of Humanity by the Guinness Book of Records and the International Database of Longevity (IDL), died on April 19, Japanese authorities announced on Monday.

A 115-year-old Polish girl

Sister André, born Lucile Randon on February 11, 1904 in Alès, in the south of France, and who now lives in Toulon, on the shores of the Mediterranean, was barely 13 months younger than her.

Even if no official body awards the "title" of dean, "Sister André becomes the dean, and by far, since the third, a Polish, is 115 years old", told AFP Laurent Toussaint, who participates in the IDL international database, in conjunction with the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED).

He points out that Sister André has “verified civil status”.

French civil status, "one of the oldest in the world"

Because in these records, it has already happened that even older people come to shake up the data of the IDL scientific base by making themselves known to the Guinness Book.

According to Jean-Marie Robine, director of research and professor emeritus at the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm), interviewed by AFP in February, France is "the country which provides the greatest number of validated, verified supercentenarians (…) In France, we have one of the oldest civil statuses in the world”.

"I can't stand the guests anymore"

On February 11, Sister André celebrated her birthday, as usual, with her traditional porto-chocolate cocktail and a hint of weariness.

“I can no longer bear them, the guests, I am less friendly”, explained the nun to AFP very recently, during an investigation into these supercentenarians who defy science.

"I was always admired for my wisdom and my intelligence, and now people make fun of me because I'm refractory," she added.

Morning service

Coming from a non-practicing Protestant family, Sister André, written in the masculine in homage to one of her three brothers, was a governess before entering orders late in life, within the company of the Daughters of Charity.

She worked until the end of the 1970s and then spent 30 years in a retirement home in Savoie, in the French Alps, before arriving in the establishment in Toulon where she rubbed shoulders with about fifteen other nuns at the morning office.

Company

In Mayotte, Tava Colo, one of the deans of the French, died at the presumed age of 118

World

Japan: Kane Tanaka, the doyenne of humanity, died at 119

  • Company

  • Old age

  • Record

  • Guinness book of records