She now holds two groundbreaking titles: the oldest living woman and the oldest living person in the world, following the death of Japan’s Tomiko Itooka on Dec. 29.
The record broken by the sister was confirmed Jan. 4 by LongeviQuest, a nonprofit that documents the world’s oldest people.
Inah, born on June 8, 1908, in Sao Francisco de Assis, Brazil, was originally considered too frail to survive childhood, Guinness World Records website said. However, she went on to lead a remarkable life, and she says it’s thanks to the rosary she is seen holding in her hands on pictures that went viral since she was announced a record-breaker.
She lives a daily quiet routine at a convent of the Congregation of Teresian Sisters, located in downtown Porto Alegre, as the Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de São Paulo described it. The sister — called the supercentenarian, a term for those over 110 years old — was recovering after a hospitalization at the end of 2024, the paper said.
The sister’s nephew Cléber Canabarro Lucas told Folha de São Paulo, “She was in pain, so they did a lot of tests and found that she has no illness, that everything is a consequence of her advanced age.”
The local paper said that while Inah has difficulties speaking, seeing and hearing unless spoken to in close distance to the ear, she celebrated her 116th birthday on June 8. At the time Porto Alegre was recovering from massive floods that hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Inah, Folha de São Paulo said, was attentive to the damage caused by the floods, including in the blocks near the convent.
“My aunt was already in poor health, but she prayed a lot. Her prayer is powerful,” Canabarro Lucas said. “Knowing that Sr. Inah was praying for everyone brought comfort to people.”
Inah began her religious journey when she was 16, in 1924, studying at Santa Teresa de Jesus boarding school in Santana do Livramento, Brazil, before moving to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she took her vows as a nun 10 years later. She was baptized at age 17 and confirmed in the Catholic Church when she was 21.
She returned to Brazil, where she taught Portuguese and mathematics in Rio de Janeiro for many years, later working at the Provincial House in Porto Alegre from 1980, the Guinness World Records website said.
In 2018, Inah received an apostolic blessing from Pope Francis on her 110th birthday. According to LongeviQuest, Inah is the last living person born in 1908 and one of just three people alive today born in the 1900s.
Inah is also the second oldest nun in documented history, after Lucile Randon, known as Sr. André of France, who died in January 2023 at 118 years and 340 days old.
Inah is also known to be an avid soccer fan, LongeviQuest said, calling her “a devoted supporter of Sport Club Internacional.”
“Whether rich or poor, it doesn’t matter — it’s for the people,” she said in a news release on LongeviQuest’s website.