Cyprian Michael Tansi
1903-1964 20th century Feast day: January 20
To give oneself to God without half-measures, and to prefer the hidden life to renown: an ordinary holiness, African and monastic.
Who was Cyprian Michael Tansi?
Born in Igboland, in south-eastern Nigeria, Michael Iwene Tansi became a schoolteacher and then a priest of the diocese of Onitsha, where he spent himself tirelessly for his parishes and formed a generation of young Christians, among them the future Cardinal Francis Arinze, whom he baptized. In his late forties, seeking a more hidden life, he entered the Trappist abbey of Mount Saint Bernard in England, where he took the name Cyprian; he died there in 1964. He is the first person from West Africa to be beatified.
In their own words
If you are going to be a Christian at all, you might as well live entirely for God.