CNN
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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 and 168 days, making her the eighth oldest person of verifiable age in history.

“Maria passed away peacefully in the care home in Catalonia, Spain, where she had lived for the past two decades,” the GWR statement said, adding that she died on Monday.

On Tuesday, Morera’s family posted on their X account announcing her death.

“She passed away as she wanted: in her sleep, in peace and without pain,” the post said.

Her family added that Morera told them shortly before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will end. Death will find me exhausted because I have experienced so much, but I want it to find me smiling, free and content.”

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

She told GWR that she has lived such a long life thanks to “order, calm, good connections with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and avoiding toxic people.”

“I think longevity also has something to do with luck. With luck and good genes,” she added.

She was born on March 4, 1907, less than four years after the Wright brothers made the first ever powered flight and two years before construction of the ill-fated Titanic even began.

Morera was born one year after her parents emigrated from Spain to the United States. Eight years later, the family moved back, arriving in Barcelona during World War I. Morera’s life 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 advanced age, Morera – with a little help from her daughter – used X to communicate with her thousands of followers.

“I am old, very old, but not a fool,” says her biography on the social media platform.

Morera is considered one of the oldest people to recover from Covid-19 after testing positive for the virus in May 2020.

According to the Gerontology Research Group, a nonprofit scientific organization that verifies the ages of people over 110, the oldest living person is currently a 116-year-old Japanese woman named Tomiko Itooka.

The title of oldest person ever attributed to a human goes to Jeanne Louise Calment. She was born on February 21, 1875 and was 122 years and 164 days old according to the GWR.