World's oldest person, a Brazilian nun, dies at 116

The world's oldest person, Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas, died on April 30 at the age of 116. She had barely survived infancy and attributed her extraordinary longevity to God and her religious order, according to two longevity research organizations.

With Canabarro’s passing, the title of world’s oldest living person now passes to Ms. Ethel Caterham, a 115-year-old resident of Surrey, England, according to the U.S. Gerontological Research Group (GRG) and the LongeviQuest database.

Born on June 8, 1908, Canabarro became the world’s oldest person earlier this year, following the death of 116-year-old Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka in January.

The Congregation of Teresian Sisters of Brazil, to which Canabarro belonged, announced her death in a statement expressing gratitude “for the dedication and devotion” she had shown throughout her life.

According to LongeviQuest, Canabarro was a frail child and "many doubted she would survive." Despite the odds, she went on to live more than a century and became a nun in 1934 at the age of 26, during the years between the two World Wars.

Canabarro credited her long life to her faith. “He is the secret of life. He is the secret of everything,” she once said, referring to God.

On her 110th birthday, she received a special blessing from Pope Francis, who passed away on April 21 at the age of 88.

Although Canabarro herself claimed she was born on May 27, 1908, GRG director Robert Young confirmed her documented birth date as June 8, 1908.

LongeviQuest noted that Canabarro was the 15th-oldest documented person in recorded history and the second-oldest nun, after France’s Lucile Randon, who lived to the age of 118 and died in 2023.