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