Paressa Orfanidou, Greece’s oldest living person, celebrated her 109th birthday
The Gerontology Research Group is pleased to announce that Mrs. Paressa Orfanidou, the oldest living person in Greece, celebrated her 109th birthday in Serres, Central Macedonia, Greece on 16 September 2024.
Paressa Orfanidou was born in a Greek Pontic family in the village of Metem, Trabzon, Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) on 16 September 1915 to father Avraam Patsatsidis and mother Despoina Papadopoulou. In 1922, at the age of seven, she moved to Greece due to the genocide. In the late 1930s, she married Stylianos Orfanidis and had four children. Her husband died in 1987. She lived in Serres between 1922 and 1965, then she moved to Athens and returned back to Serres in 2014, with a brief interval in 1987.
As of her 105th birthday in 2020, she had 4 children, 8 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and 7 great-great-grandchildren.
On 20 June 2024, following the death of 108-year-old Magdalini Pavlidou, she became the oldest known living person in Greece.
