About a week after the death of the oldest person in the world, a Brazilian nun named Inah Canabarro Lucas has been named the world’s oldest person alive at 116 years old.
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Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, the world’s oldest person living at 116, currently lives in Porto Alegre, in Rio Grande do Sul state, in the Santo Enrique de Ossó Shelter, which is next to the Provincial House of the Teresian Sisters of Brazil. She was accepted into the community at age 19 in 1927.
On Saturday (January 4), LongeviQuest, a group of researchers specializing in mapping people over 100 years old, confirmed Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas’s new achievement of becoming the world’s oldest person alive at 116 years old. She has also been named the 20th oldest person in recorded history.
In March 2024, Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas told ACI Digital, the Catholic News Agency’s Portuguese-language news partner, that one of her secrets to living a long life was prayer. She said, “I pray the rosary every day for everyone in the world.”
As mentioned, the confirmation arrived about a week after the death of 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka, a Japanese woman who died from natural causes on December 29, 2024. She was 16 days older than the Brazilian nun. Following the death of Itooka, Japan’s oldest living person became 115-year-old Okagi Hayashi, who lives in the Gifu Prefecture.
Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, the world’s oldest person at 116 years old in Brazil, was born on May 27, 1908. Speaking on her historic accomplishment on January 6, her 84-year-old nephew Cleber Vieira Canabarro Lucas told ACI Digital, “It’s a source of great pride for the Canabarro Lucas family.”
He also noted that Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas has recently been dealing with some health problems, but doctors have since treated her and advised her to rest. She is now feeling better. The nephew added, “Logically, the condition of her health at 116 years of age is already a little complicated: She no longer hears well, she has great difficulty speaking, and her vision is very poor, but she goes on with her life with the plans that God gave her.”
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Like Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas said herself, her nephew has claimed she has become the world’s oldest person alive at 116 years old due to her spirituality. He said, “[Since] she was always a little nun who prayed a lot, prayed a lot; she dedicated herself to prayer all her life.”
He also shared the Brazilian nun’s other character traits like “her kindness in always wanting to do good to others, her good humor typical of her personality, her optimism, and her determination in life.” While speaking on her childhood and growing up in the São Francisco de Assis district of inner Rio Grande do Sul state, the nephew said she was the second to last of seven children.
He said, “They were all well fed, they were normal and she was very thin, weak, and her godfather at that time told her father, ‘Friend, don’t get me wrong, but this girl must be sick and get ready because unfortunately, I don’t think she will last long’ … They’re all gone and she is already 116 years old!”
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