A soccer-loving nun from Brazil is believed to have become the world’s oldest living person at nearly 117 following the recent death of a woman from Japan.
Sister Inah Canabarro was so skinny growing up that many did not think she would survive childhood, Cleber Canabarro, her 84-year-old nephew, said.
LongeviQuest, an organization that tracks supercentenarians around the globe, released a statement on Saturday declaring the wheelchair-bound nun the world’s oldest person validated by early life records.
Photo: Carlos Macedo, LongeviQuest via AP
In a video shot by the organization in February last year, the smiling Canabarro can be seen cracking jokes, sharing miniature paintings she used to make of wild flowers and reciting the Hail Mary prayer.
The secret to longevity? Her Catholic faith, she said.
“I’m young, pretty and friendly — all very good, positive qualities that you have too,” the Teresian nun told visitors to her retirement home in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
Her nephew spends time with her every Saturday and sends her voice messages between visits to keep her spirits up following two hospitalizations that left her weak, with difficulty talking.
“The other sisters say she gets a jolt when she hears my voice,” he said. “She gets excited.”
Canabarro was born on June 8, 1908, to a large family in southern Brazil, LongeviQuest researchers said, but her nephew said her birth was registered two weeks late and she was actually born on May 27.
Her great-grandfather was a famed Brazilian general who took up arms during the turbulent period following the country’s independence from Portugal in the 19th century.
She took up 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 former president who governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985, the last military regime to rule the country. She also created two marching bands at schools in sister cities straddling the border between Uruguay and Brazil.
For her 110th birthday, she was honored by Pope Francis. She is the second-oldest nun ever documented, after Lucile Randon, who was the world’s oldest person until her death in 2023 at the age of 118.
Local soccer team Sport Club Internacional — which was 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 said.
“White or black, rich or poor, whoever you are, Inter is the team of the people,” she said in a video posted on social media celebrating her 116th birthday with the club’s president.
Canabarro took the title of the oldest living person following the death of Japan’s Tomiko Itooka last month, LongeviQuest said.
The Brazilian now ranks as the 20th-oldest documented person to have ever lived, a list topped by Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, LongeviQuest said.
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