It was the second oldest nun in history. The Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas died on Wednesday April 30, 2025, at the age of 116 and 326 days, announced the Congregation of the Theresian sisters in which she lived in the city of Porto Alegre. She had become the oldest person in the world in January, after the death of Japanese Tomiko Itoka, also 116 years old. Born June 8, 1908, in the city of Saint-François d’Assise, in the south of the country, the Brazilian nun, which knew the two world wars, had started its religious initiation at the age of sixteen. The title of “Doyenne of humanity” returns today to Ethel Caterham, who lives in the south-east of England, in Surrey. She is 115 years old and 252 days old, according to the gerontology research group in the United States (GRG) and Longeviquet.
The new dean of humanity was born on August 21, 1909, and was also the last British born before 1910, thus becoming the last surviving subject of King Edouard VII. The Englishwoman was born in the county of Hampshire, and has traveled a lot in her long life. Ethel Caterham was indeed employed as an au pair in a family of soldiers in India when she was 18, reports the BBC, that is to say in the late 1920s. She returned to the United Kingdom in the early 1930s, and married Norman Caterham. Her husband named Lieutenant-Colonel, the couple was parked in Hong Kong, where Ethel Caterham founded a crèche, and in Gibraltar. During the last fifty years, the dean of humanity has lived in Surrey, where she continued to drive a car until her 97 years. Her two deceased daughters, she is surrounded by her three granddaughters and her five great-grandchildren.
The dean of humanity congratulated by King Charles III
Questioned by the BBC on the occasion of its one hundred and five anniversary, Ethel Caterham gave the secret of its longevity: “I never argue with anyone, I listen to and I do what I like”. Remembering her youth, she describes: “We had no television, no radio or anything. We had to create our own music. There was no electricity.” On her birthday, she received a card written by King Charles III. The latter, currently suffering from cancer, sent him his “The warmest wishes” For his birthday, “A really remarkable step”underlines the sovereign.
