World’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, dies aged 117

(CNN) — The world’s oldest person, US-born Maria Branyas Morera, has died at the age of 117, her family announced on social media.

Guinness World Records (GWR) also released a statement confirming her death at the age of 117 years 168 days, making her the eighth-oldest person with a verifiable age in history.

“Maria passed away peacefully at the nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, where she resided for the past two decades,” read the GWR statement, which added that she died on Monday.

On Tuesday, Morera’s family published a post on her X account announcing her death.

“She has gone the way she wanted: in her sleep, at peace, and without pain,” reads the post.

Her family added that Morera told them shortly before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want it to find me smiling, free, and satisfied.”

Morera was named the world’s oldest living person by GWR in January 2023 after the death of French nun Sister André at the age of 118.

She told GWR that she had lived such a long life thanks to “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.”

“I think longevity is also about being lucky. Luck and good genetics,” she added.

Her birth on March 4, 1907 came less than four years after the Wright Brothers launched the first ever power driven flight and two years before construction had even begun on the ill-fated Titanic.

Morera was born a year after her parents emigrated to the US from Spain. Eight years later, the family moved back, arriving in Barcelona during World War I. Morera’s life has also spanned the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

She spent the last decades of her life in a nursing home in Catalonia, where, despite her advancing years, Morera used X - with a little help from her daughter – to communicate with her thousands of followers.

“I am old, very old, but not an idiot,” her bio reads on the social media platform.

Morera is believed to be among the oldest people to have recovered from Covid-19, having tested positive for the virus in May 2020.

According to the Gerontology Research Group, a scientific non-profit which validates the ages of people aged at least 110, the oldest living person is now a 116-year-old Japanese woman named Tomiko Itooka.

The title of the oldest person ever recorded belongs to Jeanne Louise Calment. Born on February 21, 1875, her life spanned 122 years and 164 days, according to GWR.

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