CNN
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The world’s oldest person, Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, has died at age 116, her order announced on Wednesday.
The soccer-loving Brazilian nun officially became the oldest person in the world in January following the death of Japan’s Tomiko Itooka, according to Guinness World Records (GWR).
When Canabarro was born on June 8, 1908, according to GWR, Theodore Roosevelt was still the United States President, penicillin had not yet been discovered, and movies were still silent.
There is some dispute about her exact birth date, as Cleber Canabarro, her 84-year-old nephew, told the Associated Press that her birth was registered two weeks late and she was actually born on May 27.
She was so skinny growing up, Canabarro added, that many doubted she would survive to adulthood, let alone become a centenarian.
She took up religious work as a teenager and always maintained her Catholic faith was the secret to her incredibly long life. “(God) is the secret of life. He is the secret of everything,” she once said, according to LongeviQuest, a database that tracks the lives of supercentenarians. On her 110th birthday, she received a blessing from Pope Francis.
After spending two years in Montevideo, Uruguay, Canabarro moved back to Brazil and lived in Rio de Janeiro before returning to her home state, Rio Grande do Sul, AP reported.
She spent much of her life as a teacher and counted General João Figueiredo, the military dictator who governed Brazil from 1979 to 1985, among her former students.
Canabarro was a lifelong fan of her local soccer club, Sport Club Internacional (Inter), which celebrated her birthday every year. The club released a statement on Wednesday paying tribute to her “kindness, faith and love.”
Following Canabarro’s death, English great-grandmother Ethel Caterham became the oldest person in the world, at age 115 years and 252 days, according to GWR.
Caterham is believed to be the last living person born in 1909 and is the last British person born before 1913, GWR added.
Canabarro was the second-oldest Brazilian and 15th-oldest person ever, according to LongeviQuest. The title of the oldest person ever recorded belongs to Jeanne Louise Calment. Born on February 21, 1875, her life spanned 122 years and 164 days, according to GWR.
