Blessed Cyprian Michael is first Nigerian to be beatified
Catholic Spirit, January 2007, Good News
By Mary Lou Gibson
Columnist
A young boy was born in 1903 in southern Nigeria to a farmer named Tabansi and his wife who were members of the Igbo (or Ibo) tribe. The boy was given the name Iwene, meaning "let human malice not kill me." Nigeria was a British colony at the time and Iwene's father committed an offense against the colonial authority and was sent to prison. This event affected the entire family, especially Iwene, who received an education that put him on the path to Christianity and sainthood.
Father Robert Hodge, a monk at Mount St. Bernard Abbey in Leicester, England, later wrote that Iwene's father resolved to have his son educated in a Christian school. Hodge believes he did this not for religious reasons, but so that his son could be educated well enough to deal with the colonial authority.
So young Iwene Tansi received his primary education from the Irish Holy Ghost missionaries in Nduka. He was baptized there and took the name Michael. After he received his teaching certificate at age 16, he taught in schools at Onitsha and Aguleri and became headmaster of St. Joseph's when he was just 21.
It was in these early teaching years that Iwene was drawn to the priesthood. He entered St. Paul's Seminary in 1925 and was ordained in the Onitsha Cathedral in 1937. One of his first assignments was to start a new parish in Dunukofia.
A catechumen at his parish said later that Father Michael Iwene was the first priest he knew who was "under God" and that he wanted to be like him. That catechumen grew up to become a priest and later Cardinal Arinze, a close confidant of Father Michael.
For the next 10 years, Father Michael served in parishes in Akpu and Onitsha, traveling on foot or bicycle from village to village. He became renowned for his preaching and involvement in community projects. Burns wrote that he helped make many of the mud bricks for a boarding school being built in one village ("Butler's Lives of the Saints").
As he went among the people, he often encountered customs and superstitions handed down among tribes and in villages. An account in "John Paul II's Book of Saints" relates how he confronted the myth of the "cursed forest" when he was the pastor in Dunukofia, in the Umudioka region.
In another event, Father Michael confronted members of a secret society who were supposedly "spirit possessed." He told them, "The spirit has been confronted by a more powerful Spirit."
Father Michael started marriage preparation centers in many of his parishes. He held strong views about how husbands and wives should treat one another. One of his friends, Sister Eucharia Anyaegbunam, remembered one visit that she and Father Michael made to the home of a parishioner. The parishioner was talking about his wife and he referred to her as Onye bem ("somebody in my house," the Igbo expression for wife). Father Michael immediately corrected the man and told him, "She is not ‘Onye bem' but your wife, your better half, part of your own body."
During his years as a priest and pastor, Father Michael held on to a secret desire. He longed to be a contemplative monk, but there were no monasteries like this in Nigeria. After making a pilgrimage to Rome in 1950, he applied to the abbey of Mount St. Bernard, a Trappist monastery, in Leicester in England. He was accepted as a novice and took the name of Cyprian.
When Father Cyprian Michael entered the abbey, he hoped that he and the other Nigerian postulants would eventually return to Nigeria to found a monastery there and that Mount St. Bernard would be the mother house.
But those plans never materialized, mostly because of lack of money. Father Cyprian Michael and another Nigerian, Father Clement, decided to stay at the abbey. Father Cyprian gave retreats and his reputation for holiness brought many visitors to the abbey.
After a few years, his health failed and he suffered from a recurrence of a stomach ulcer and was an invalid for two years. Finally, in 1963 the Trappist foundation made plans for an African monastery, but it was to be in Cameroon, not in Nigeria. Nevertheless, Father Cyprian was pleased and looked forward to becoming the novice master at this new monastery. However, as the new monastery took shape, Father Cyprian's health worsened and he died in Leicester on Jan. 20, 1964.
His friend, Father Arinze, began collecting documents of his life and received permission to transfer the documents and begin the process for sainthood from the Archdiocese of Onitsha. Father Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi was declared venerable in 1995 and became the first Nigerian to be beatified in 1998. At his beatification, Cardinal Arinze told the congregation of African Christians that "Saints are ordinary men and women from your own villages." His remains were taken to Onitsha for burial in 1988 and are now enshrined in Aguleri.
Many of Father Cyprian's teachings survive through his retreat notes and remembrances from the many Nigerians who were his parishioners. A parishioner from Ogbunike, Monica Egwin, said "He taught us that if you take any flower with joy and praise the beauty you are praising is God."
Parishioner Augustine Chendo remembered him telling the congregation that the greatest murder on earth is to kill time. In a letter to Augustine in 1959, Father Cyprian wrote: "Prayer is the best weapon for obtaining favours from God. . . Mass is the most powerful of all prayers."
Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi's feast day is Jan. 20.