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.
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.
On 22 March 1998, upon the recommendation of Cardinal Francis Arinze, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II. His feast day is 20 January.
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. An incident happened when a local person named Onwurume wanted to take a little palm oil to put on his roasted yam (yam is the staple food of Igbo people, and palm oil to yams is the cultural equivalent of butter to bread) and decided to puncture a barrel of palm oil to get some. When the hole he made caused the entire barrel to be emptied out, he ran away, but was grabbed by employees of the company and put into custody. When the local people heard about it, they gathered together to negotiate with the company agents, but the company called for military reinforcements and arrested twelve village chiefs who came to negotiate. Afterwards, they proceeded to attack the neighbouring villages, burning down the homes of the local people and looting their property, as well as mistakenly destroying a nearby village of a different group that had no relation to the incident.
Michael’s father was Tabansi of Igbezunu, Aguleri. He was one of the people taken hostage by the Royal Niger Company and later released. Michael was his first born, and he had another son with his first wife. Later he named his firstborn son ‘Iwe-egbune’, shortened to Iwene, meaning ‘let malice not kill’; this was the birth-name of Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi. His parents were poor farmers; they were not Christian. After the death of his first wife, Iwene’s father married again. He and his second wife had four boys and one girl.
When Iwene was a young child, he became permanently blinded in one eye as a result of a mud-fight with other children.
His father sent Iwene to Holy Trinity School in Onitsha, which was run by the Holy Ghost Fathers. Tabansi meant for his son to get a better education that would help lead their family out of poverty, so that they would never again be taken advantage of by the westerners. Michael was baptized on July 7, 1913 with the Christian name of Michael. At the school, Michael served as an altar boy and catechist. Upon graduating, he became a teacher, and worked as a teacher from 1919-1925, Later, he became headmaster at St. Joseph’s school in Aguleri.
