The world’s oldest living person has been revealed – and she is a 116-year-old nun from Brazil.
Sister Inah Canabarro, who was born on 8 June 1908, became the world’s oldest person following the death of a woman from Japan on 29 December.
LongeviQuest, an organisation that tracks supercentenarians around the globe, said the wheelchair-bound nun’s achievement had been validated by early life records.
She ranks as the 20th oldest person to have lived – a list topped by France’s Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122.
Ms Canabarro has said the secret to her longevity is her Catholic faith.
Sister Inah Canabarro has become the oldest living person. Pic: Carlos Macedo/LongeviQuest/AP
In a video shared by LongeviQuest last year, the nun was cracking jokes, reciting the Hail Mary prayer and sharing miniature paintings she used to make of wild flowers.
“I’m young, pretty and friendly – all very good, positive qualities that you have too,” she told visitors to her retirement home in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
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The 116-year-old was born to a large family in southern Brazil and took up religious work as a teenager.
She spent two years in Montevideo, Uruguay, before moving to Rio de Janeiro and eventually closer to home in southern Brazil.
The nun was honoured by Pope Francis for her 110th birthday and is now the second oldest nun ever documented, after Lucile Randon, who lived to 118.
She is an avid football fan and her local club Inter celebrates her birthday every year with a cake and balloons in the team’s red and white colours.
Ms Canabarro took the title of the oldest living person after the death of Tomiko Itooka at a care home in Ashiya, central Japan.
