VERBANIA, Italy — The last time Emma Morano left her apartment, she was 102 years old.
Next to her bed, Ms. Morano had hung photos of her parents and siblings — five sisters and three brothers — along with some religious images.
“We have too many things, too many distractions, too many items offered to us, too many messages,
and a person like Emma struggles to emerge,” the Rev.
This is how Ms. Morano recollected it:
 “My sisters and I loved to dance and we’d run away to the dance hall and then our mother would come looking for us with a birch stick.”
The reason for her longevity has long been pondered, and investigated, by researchers and fans.
Ms. Morano hadn’t left her apartment for years, Ms. Santoni said.
The few worldly possessions she left behind, accumulated over the course of more decades than you or I will probably live,
didn’t take up much space in the tiny two-room church-owned apartment where she spent the last 27 years of her life.
Ms. Morano, the last person documented as being born in the 1800s, died peacefully on April 15.