Inah Canabarro, a Brazilian nun and teacher who was the world’s oldest person, died on Wednesday just weeks short of turning 117.

Canabarro died at home of natural causes. She was confirmed in January as the world’s oldest person by LongeviQuest, an organization that tracks supercentenarians around the globe.

She would have turned 117 on May 27. According to LongeviQuest, the world’s oldest person is now Ethel Caterham, a 115-year-old British woman.

As a child, Inah Canabarro was so skinny that many people didn’t think she would survive into adulthood, Cleber Canabarro, her 84-year-old nephew, told The Associated Press in January,

Her great-grandfather was a famed Brazilian general who took up arms during the turbulent period following Brazil’s independence from Portugal in the 19th century.

She spent two years as a teenager in Montevideo, Uruguay, before moving to Rio de Janeiro and eventually settling in her home state of Rio Grande do Sul. A lifelong teacher, among her former students was Gen. Joao Figueiredo, the last of the military dictators who governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985. She was also the beloved creator of two marching bands at schools in sister cities straddling the border between Uruguay and Brazil.

Canabarro took the title of the oldest living person following the death of Japan’s Tomiko Itooka in December, according to LongeviQuest. She ranked as the 20th oldest documented person to have ever lived, a list topped by Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, according to LongeviQuest.

(AP)