Who is the oldest person in the world? Age of oldest living people after Lucile Randon dies, aged 118

The world’s oldest person has died at the age of 118-years-old. Lucile Randon died in her nursing home in Toulon, France on 17 January 2023.

Lucile held the record as the world-oldest living person from April 2022, following the death of Kane Tanaka in Japan. The supercentenarian - someone who lives past 110 - was also known to be the world’s oldest known survivor of Covid-19, after she contracted the virus in January 2021.

The baton of the oldest living human has now been handed down to Maria Branyas Morea. However, there have been unverified claims which could mean her claim is challenged.

Who was Lucile Randon?

Lucile Randon was born in Ales, France on 11 February, 1904. She died on 17 January 2023, living to the age of 118 years and 340 days.

Lucile lived most of her life as a nun, having converted from protestantism to catholicism in 1923 at the age of 19. She would continue to complete missions in French hospitals until 1979, however she continued to care for the elderly until she was 100-years-old.

In 2009, at the age of 105-years-old, Lucile moved into a retirement home herself in Toulon. During her time in the facility, she contracted the Covid-19 virus.

Despite her advanced age at the time of infection, the supercentenarian remained asymptomatic. She tested negative for the virus days before she celebrated her 117th birthday.

Lucile was named as the world’s oldest living person on 19 April 2022. She stated that the title was a “sad honour” and that she would “be better off in heaven”, but she also said she loved being around her family.

Who is the now oldest person in the world?

Maria Branyas Morea was born on 4 March, 1907, making her 115-years-old. She was born in San Francisco to a Catalan mother and father.

Maria would move with her family back to Spain at the age of seven in 1914. After settling in Barcelona, she met her future husband Joan Moret, a doctor with whom she worked alongside as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War.

Maria has lived in a nursing home in Olot, Catalonia since 2000. She became a supercentenarian on 4 March 2017, reaching the age of 110-years-old, and has also been the oldest living Spanish resident since the death of 113-year-old Josefa Santos Gonzalez in December 2019.

While Maria is the oldest verified living person in the world, there are claims from some people that have not yet been independently verified. This includes a South African woman named Johanna Mazibuko.

Johanna holds identification papers which states she was born in May 1894. This would make her 127-year-old at the time of writing.

Who was the oldest living person ever?

While Lucile and Maria have both lived a long life which most of the world’s population will never reach, neither hold the record for the longest living person in history. The record-holder is Jeanne Calment.

The French citizen lived to the age of 122 years and 164 days before her death in August 1997. She is the only person to have been verified to live past the age of 120-years-old.

There have been unverified claims that a woman named Francisca Susano may have held the record, reportedly dying at the age of 124 in November 2021. Francisca, who is said by local government officials to have been born in the Philippines in 1897, had documents which were undergoing verification by the Guinness World Records at the time of her death.