The life of Blessed Cyprian Tansi

Phil McCarthy • October 24, 2023

'If you are going to be a Christian at all, you might as well live entirely for God.' [1]

Blessed Cyprian Tansi, (1903-1964)

'We should reflect constantly that we have renounced the world and as strangers and foreigners we sojourn here for a time.' [2]

Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (249-258)

Iwene Tansi was born in 1903 in Igboezunu, southern Nigeria. His parents, Tabansi and Ejikwevi, were Igbo farmers who practised traditional religion. In 1909 he was sent to the Christian village of Nduka, where he was baptized three years later by Irish missionaries and given the name Michael.

He was an able and diligent student and qualified as a teacher, soon becoming a headteacher, but in 1925, against his family’s wishes, he entered St Paul's Seminary in Igbariam. After finishing his philosophical and theological studies, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Heerey in the cathedral of Onitsha in 1937. He was the first indigenous priest in the Aguleri region. In 1939 he was appointed parish priest of Dunukofia. His example of prayer and joyful dedication to others deeply affected the community, resulting in many vocations to the priesthood and religious life. He showed the same attributes during his time as parish priest of Akpu, where he served from 1945 until his transfer to Aguleri in 1949. He especially strove to promote the dignity of women and the education of young people.

Despite being a successful parish priest Fr Tansi felt a desire for a life of complete self-surrender to God in a contemplative Order. At a meeting of diocesan clergy sometime in 1949 or 1950, Bishop Heerey expressed the desire that one of his priests would embrace the monastic life so that he could later establish a contemplative monastery in the Diocese of Onitsha. Fr Tansi volunteered, and the Trappist Abbey of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire accepted him for a trial period as an oblate. Life in Trappist monasteries follows the Strict Observance of the Cistercian Rule with an emphasis on fraternity, solitude and silence.

In the summer of 1950 Fr Tansi led his parishioners on a pilgrimage to Rome for the Holy Year and went on from there to Mount St Bernard. English culture and weather must have been a terrible shock, but he settled into this new enclosed and austere life of prayer, humility and obedience, working in the refectory and bookbindery. After two and a half years as an oblate, he was admitted to the novitiate, taking the name Cyprian, after the 3^rd Century bishop of Carthage of African Berber descent. Fr Tansi was solemnly professed as a monk of St Bernard on 8 December 1956. His brother monks remembered him as “absorbed in prayer” and “a living example of patience and charity”.

In 1963 the time seemed right to establish a monastery in Nigeria, but political tensions in the country led his superiors to choose to found the new monastery in neighbouring Cameroon instead. This was a bitter blow for Fr Cyprian, and his brother monks recalled it as only time they ever saw him angry. At last he came to accept the decision as God's will.

In January 1964 he became suddenly unwell and sadly died a few days later in Leicester Royal Infirmary of an aortic aneurysm. He was buried at Mount St Bernard. Fr Tansi had long expressed the desire to return to Nigeria so in 1988 his remains were exhumed and reburied near the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha, where he had been ordained a priest 51 years earlier. Despite this Mount St Bernard remains a place of pilgrimage, especially for Catholics of Nigerian heritage.

In 1941, as a young priest, Fr Tansi baptised a nine-year old boy from the village of Eziowelle, Anambra. Francis Arinze grew up to follow Tansi into the priesthood, going on to become Archbishop of Onitsha and President of the Nigerian Bishops Conference. He has been a Cardinal since 1985 and was one of the principal advisors to Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Arinze never forgot the man who had baptised and then inspired him, and he recommended Tansi for beatification. At the Mass of his beatification on 22 March 1998, at Oba, Nigeria, Pope John Paul II said:

"Blessed Cyprian Michael Tansi is a prime example of the fruits of holiness which have grown and matured in the Church in Nigeria since the Gospel was first preached in this land. He received the gift of faith through the efforts of the missionaries, and, taking the Christian way of life as his own, he made it truly African and Nigerian."

Blessed Cyprian’s Feast Day is on 20^th January. He is the patron of Nigerian priests.

Mount St Bernard Monastery is the destination of the Diocese of Nottingham Pilgrim Way, the Way of Blessed Cyprian Tansi.

PRAYER TO BLESSED CYPRIAN TANSI

Blessed Cyprian,

during your life on earth

you showed your great faith and love

in giving yourself to your people

and by the hidden life

of prayer and contemplation.

Look upon us now in our needs,

and intercede for us with the Lord.

May he grant us the favour we ask

through our prayers. Amen.

PRAYER FOR THE CANONISATION OF BLESSED CYPRIAN TANSI

O God, who granted many graces to your servant,

Priest and Monk, Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi,

choosing him as your faithful instrument for evangelisation and sanctification of your people,

grant also that I may spend my life loving you and my neighbour and serving the Church.

Deign to glorify your servant Cyprian Michael and through his intercession to grant me the favour I now ask in faith.

[1] Entirely for God: the life of Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, Elizabeth Isichei (Cistercian Publications, 1980)

[2] On Mortality, Ch 26

< Older Post

Newer Post >

The Pilgrimage of Hope is open for day pilgrims to register!

By Phil McCarthy • June 5, 2025

Registration for day pilgrims to join the 2025 National Walking Pilgrimage of Hope is now open! The Pilgrimage of Hope is a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and Southwark, London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes are named after the Evangelists and use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to join for day stages. Stretches which are suitable for wheelchairs and buggies have been be identified. There will be opportunities for non-walkers to provide enroute support, hospitality and prayer. There are possible feeder routes to the four main Ways from all the other Catholic cathedrals of England & Wales for keen long-distance walkers, so people from every diocese can organise their own pilgrimages. More information and registration Information about how to support the Pilgrimage with prayer and hospitality and how to register to walk stages as day pilgrims can be found here . Wishing you every blessing and joy during this Jubilee year, as we strive to become ‘pilgrims of hope’. I hope to meet many of you in Nottingham on 13th September. Buen camino! Phil McCarthy, Project Lead

Walking in the steps of London's saints

By Colette Joyce /ICN • June 4, 2025

A group of 25 pilgrims gathered at the English Martyrs Church by Tower Hill last Thursday morning, Feast of the Ascension, to take part in the Westminster Way Jubilee Year Pilgrimage, led by Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Colette Joyce. At each station we prayed and reflected on saints connected to London and the inspiration they continue to be for us today: St John Houghton and the Carthusian Martyrs of the Reformation, the missionary St Augustine of Canterbury, St Anne Line who sheltered priests and held secret Masses in her home during the Elizabethan persecution, St Erconwald, St Ethelburga and St Etheldreda. We remembered the scholars of the 7th century who brought learning and education to both men and women, and St John Henry Newman whose own spiritual journey of conversion and prophetic sense of the nature of the Church had a profound influence on the 20th century leading up to the Second Vatican Council. From the church we walked past the Tower of London, where so many Catholic martyrs met their fate during the Reformation, stopping to pray at the site of the scaffold where St John Fisher and St Thomas More were executed. Our next stop was Mary Moorfields, the only Catholic Church in the City of London. From here we walked to the Charterhouse, once a Carthusian priory and home to the first martyrs of the Reformation. The Prior, St John Houghton and Companions were hung and quartered for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Watching from his cell window, St Thomas More witnessed the monks being dragged on hurdles from the Tower of London on 4 May 1535. He is said to have admired their courage and faith as they went to their deaths, viewing them as "Cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms going to their marriage." From here we walked to St Etheldreda's, Ely Place, one of the oldest Catholic churches in London. Built around 1250 as the town chapel for the bishops of Ely. After the Reformation It had several owners . For a a time it was used by the Spanish ambassador as a private chapel. During Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, it was used as a prison and a hospital. The Rosminians bought St Etheldreda's in 1874 and have restored it beautifully. As we were walking during Laudato Si' Week, pilgrim leader Colette Joyce invited pilgrims to reflect on the flora and fauna of London on our way. London is a surprisingly green city, blessed with around twenty percent tree coverage - which makes it technically a forest! We are especially grateful to the Victorians who planted the ubiquitous London Plane trees which can be found in streets and parks all over the city, while there are more than 400 other species of tree to discover. "The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God… contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us." (Laudato Si', 84-85) After a stop at Corpus Christi Church in Covent Garden - where former parish priest Fr Francis Stanfield wrote Sweet Sacrament Divine and Mgr Ronald Knox preached his famous homilies on the Blessed Sacrament - we made our way down the Strand, past Traflagar Square, through Whitehall, down to Westminster Cathedral. On our arrival, we weary walkers were greeted by the Cathedral Dean, Fr Slawomir Witoń. We ended our pilgrimage with prayers in the Martyrs Chapel and a reflection from Fr Slawomir on the life and witness of St John Southworth, patron saint of clergy in the Diocese of Westminster. The pilgrims received the final stamp in their Pilgrim Passports and a blessing before returning home. Colette Joyce, Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Read more about the Westminster Way: https://westminsterjusticeandpeace.org/2025/06/02/walking-the-westminster-way/ This article was first published on Independent Catholic News: Independent Catholic News Image: Pilgrims at Westminster Cathedral (Archdiocese of Westminster)

The Psychology of Pilgrimage

By Phil McCarthy • June 3, 2025

In this podcast I discuss the psychology of pilgrimage, especially as it relates to visiting First World War battlefields and cemeteries.

Walking the St Wulstan Way

By Peter Chisholm • May 31, 2025

Pilgrims joined Fr Gerry Walsh tracing St Wulstan’s life and legacy, from Worcester Cathedral to Clifton Cathedral as part of the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee, “Pilgrims of Hope” celebrations. Participants explored their faith while journeying through stunning landscapes and historic locations.