The world’s oldest known person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118, a spokesperson has said.

Randon, known as Sister Andrée, was born in southern France on 11 February 1904, a decade before  World War I.

She died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon, said spokesperson David Tavella.

“There is great sadness but … it was her desire to join her beloved brother. For her, it’s a liberation,” an AFP report cited Tavella of the Sainte-Catherine-Labouré nursing home as saying.

The sister was for long the oldest European, and then after the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka aged 119 last year she became the oldest person on Earth.

She worked as a governess and tutor after which she joined a convent in 1944, at the age of 40.

In 2021, she survived a bout of Covid-19 after the virus swept through the nursing home where she lived, in which 10 residents died.

At the time, she told Var-Matin newspaper: “I didn’t even realise I had it.”