Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi

Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi // ⓘ, OCSO (September 1903 – 20 January 1964) was an Igbo Nigerian priest of the Catholic Church who worked in the Archdiocese of Onitsha and later became a Trappist monk at Mount Saint Bernard Monastery in England.

Tansi was born in September 1903, in an area of Nigeria under the control of the Royal Niger Company (RNC).

The RNC maintained a trading outpost in Aguleri, purchasing palm oil from local farmers to sell abroad.

Michael's father, Tabansi of Igbezunu, was once taken hostage by the Royal Niger Company and later released.

[1] When Iwene was a young child, he became permanently blinded in one eye as a result of a mud-fight with other children.

While Igbo could become priests, they were subject to strict discipline and were often expelled from seminary for relatively minor lapses.

He would eat even poorer food than what the local people ate, surviving on tiny portions of yam.

He organized programs for the needy, taught people building techniques, and was remembered as being kind.

He also had a women's group organized, who would enforce disciplines on their own members to avoid premarital sex and deter abortion.

Later, his experience as a novice monk gave him insight into his earlier methods and caused him to reconsider.

[4] At the monastery, he entered the novitiate and then took vows, receiving as his monastic name Cyprian, after the Roman martyr.

[10] Father Anselm Stark, who knew Fr Cyprian, recalled: "As a person he was very ordinary, very humble, obviously a great man of deep prayer and dedication.

This caused him much stress, and it was during this trying time that he understood that he had made some mistakes in Nigeria with the hard discipline and expectations he had placed on those under him.

[1] His body was buried at the monastery in England, but was later interred at the Cathedral Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha, Nigeria.

[3] Pope John Paul 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.

Archbishop Valerian Okeke compared Tansi to St John Mary Vianney as a model of sanctity.