Guayaquil, Ecuador ? At 100 years old, she became bedridden and so weakened from a stomach ailment that a priest administered last rites. But Maria Esther de Capovilla recovered, and 16 years later she has become the oldest person on Earth, according to Guinness World Records.

Born on Sept. 14, 1889, the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, Capovilla was married the year the United States entered World War I – 1917 – and widowed in 1949.

“We see the condition she is in, and what is admirable is not only that she reached this age, but that she got here in this shape, in very good health,” Capovilla’s daughter, Irma, 79, told an Associated Press reporter at the home where her mother lives in this coastal city.

Emiliano Mercado Del Toro, of Puerto Rico, retains the title as oldest man, at 114.

The oldest person ever whose age was authenticated, according to Guinness, was a woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to 122 years and 164 days. She was born in France on Feb. 21, 1875, and died at a nursing home in Arles in southern France on Aug. 4, 1997.

Three of Capovilla’s five children – daughters Irma and Hilda, 81, and son Anibal, 77, – are still alive, along with 10 of her 11 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren, the last of whom was born in February 2003.