A football-loving nun from Brazil is said to have become the world’s oldest living person at almost 117 years after the disaster. recent death of a woman from Japan.
Sister Inah Canabarro was so thin growing up that many thought she would not survive childhood, Cleber Canabarro, her 84-year-old nephew, told The Associated Press.
LongeviQuest, an organization that tracks supercentenarians around the world, released a statement Saturday declaring the wheelchair-bound nun the world’s oldest person, validated by early life data.
In a video shot by the organization last February, the smiling Canabarro is seen cracking jokes, sharing miniature paintings she used to make from wildflowers and reciting the Hail Mary prayer.
Carlos Macedo/LongeviQuest, via AP
The secret to a long life? Her Catholic faith, she says.
“I am young, beautiful and friendly – all very good, positive qualities that you also have,” the Teresian nun tells visitors to her retirement home in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
Her cousin spends time with her every Saturday and sends her voice messages between visits to keep her mood up after two hospital stays that left her weak and struggling to speak.
“The other sisters say she gets a shock when she hears my voice,” he says. “She gets excited.”
Canabarro was born into a large family in southern Brazil on June 8, 1908, according to LongeviQuest researchers. But her cousin said her birth was registered two weeks late and she was actually born on May 27. Her great-grandfather was a famous Brazilian general who took up arms during the turbulent period following Brazil’s independence from Portugal in the 19th century.
She began religious work as a teenager and spent two years in Montevideo, Uruguay, before moving to Rio de Janeiro and eventually settling in her home state of Rio Grande do Sul. A lifelong teacher, among her former students was General Joao Figueiredo, the last of the military dictators who ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. She was also the beloved creator of two brass bands at schools in twin cities on the Uruguay-Brazil border. .
For her 110th birthday, she was honored by Pope Francis. She is the second oldest nun ever documented Lucile Randonwho was the oldest person in the world until her death in 2023 at the age of 118.
Local football club Inter – founded after Canabarro’s birth – celebrates the birthday of its oldest fan every year. Her room is decorated with gifts in the team’s red and white colors, her nephew says.
“White or black, rich or poor, whoever you are, Inter is the people’s team,” she said in a video posted on social media to mark her 116th birthday with the club’s president.
Canabarro took the title of oldest living person after the death of Japan’s Tomiko Iooka in December, according to LongeviQuest. She now ranks 20th as the oldest documented person to have ever lived, a list topping France’s Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, according to LongeviQuest.
