In each issue as we countdown toward the new millennium, we are bringing you the countdown of the TOP 100 CATHOLICS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY as voted upon by the readers. We will spotlight each of the 100 Top Catholics chosen by readers over a three month period of time earlier this year. We received a total of 23,455 votes nominating 728 candidates for "Top 100 Catholics of the 20th Century" consideration. The top five vote-getters garnered 9,477 with the top ten registering a total 13,470. The Top 100 chosen received 21,603 votes with those 628 candidates not making the list receiving 8% of the vote.
Caliber-wise in the final tally, DAILY CATHOLIC readers made excellent choices and there is a good balance throughout the century list. Eight of the nine Roman Pontiffs of this century made the list except for Pope John Paul I whose pontificate lasted only one month. There are five Saints and six Blesseds as well as seven whose cause for Beatification has been introduced to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The voters selected fifteen cardinals, seven bishops, nineteen priests, seven nuns and two lay brothers. The laity is well represented with four entertainers, four politicians, six renowned secular authors, and numerous dynamic Marian luminaries that have proved their worth through the fruits they have produced by their efforts. Education checks in with several who made the list in all aspects of scholastics including two university presidents and the pro-life movement also has several organizers who made the list as well as well-known leaders of various Catholic non-profit organizations dedicated to upholding the truths of the Church.
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87. Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi
The voters chose as the 87th selection Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, a Cistercian priest from Nigeria who was beatified by Pope John Paul II on March 22, 1998 during the Holy Father's Papal visit to the African country where Nigeria's most recent shining light Cardinal Francis Arinze officiated with the Pope in declaring this Trappist monk Blessed. Blessed Cyprian was born in Western Nigeria in Igboezunu in September 1903. Both his parents were pagan, but his father named him well, choosing Iwene which meant "sorrow will not kill you." His father died when he was only one and he was brought up by relatives who sent him to St. Joseph's school in the Christian village of Aguleri for his elementary schooling. On January 7, 1912 he was baptized into the Faith and given the baptismal name Michael. A few years later, while engaging in roughhousing with fellow classmates, he was struck in the eye by a hard lump of clay and blinded for life in his left eye. Because of his age and the embarrassment of it, he kept it confidential and few knew until later in life.
Despite his handicap he rose quickly through his grades and graduated in 1919 at the age of 16. He began teaching at the same school and at the age of 21, two years after his mother was poisoned, he became headmaster at St. Joseph's. Two years later Nigeria's Bishop Shanahan opened a seminary in Igbariam on the banks of the Niger River. Michael asked his pastor if he could enroll in the seminary but because of his position as headmaster, had to wait until 1925 before he could be replaced. Though the curriculum was tough, Michael persevered and on December 19, 1937 he was ordained. His first assignment was in the Onitsha Diocese for the next thirteen years. He threw himself totally into his life as a priest, taking special time for hearing confessions and spending longer than usual to say Holy Mass because of his awe of the Blessed Sacrament. One of the young men he nurtured was Cardinal Arinze who Fr. Tansi baptized and bestowed his First Holy Communion. Fr. Tansi was so devoted to the Blessed Sacrament that he promoted Forty Hours Devotion as often as he could, spending many of those forty hours there himself, assuring that factions adverse to Catholicism would not enter the church and desecrate the Holy Eucharist. The more he spent before Our Lord in the tabernacle or the Monstrance, the more he contemplated contemplative life.
In 1944 he approaced his bishop, Bishop Heerey at the time, and asked if he could consider allowing him to pursue a contemplative order. Like the predicament at his school when he was a headmaster, the Bishop declined his request because he was needed in pastoral work. But three years later the Bishop changed his mind and allowed Fr. Tansi to look into orders which provided a contemplative, prayerful lifestyle. In fact, the Bishop even researched for him but asked Fr. Tansi to continue his pastoral work for the time being, assigning him as a curate at his home parish in Aguleri. In 1950 he was finally able to follow his heart and enter the Abbey at Mount Saint Bernard in Leicestershire, England as a novice. He took the name Cyprian. At first it was strange and he felt lost, especially after his own bishop visited him at the Cistercian Abbey and then left. When he left, Fr. Tansi felt the last vestige of his homeland had been broken and he felt great sadness. But it was replaced by the presence of Christ both in the Blessed Sacrament and in his heart. The monks worked hard at the abbey, and Fr. Cyprian was no stranger to hard labor from his training in Africa. Because of language and red-tape by which his own bishop had to fully release him from any obligations of returning to Africa, Fr. Cyprian was not accepted into the Cistercian Order until December 8th, 1953 when he made his simple profession of faith.
He realize that with this vow, he had forever cut his ties with his African homeland and true to his promise to God, he would not return to Africa until after his death when his body was brought back from England and reinterred in Nigeria. His life in England was a monumental adjustment for this young Ibo from Western Nigeria who had grown up in the heat and sunshine of the Equator region of his homeland. England was cold and cloudy and the weather greatly affected his physical constitution, but he suffered in silence. He was known by his fellow Trappist monks as the "Good Shepherd," always ready to assist others. Though he could speak little as a Trappist, he wrote voraciously when he could and whatever he wrote was well-thought out. Also, though he knew he would never again see his homeland, he never forgot his people, praying constantly for them in his life as a contemplative. As his holiness gained a reputation among his fellow monks and superiors, word got out and many bishops from all over made pilgrimages to the Abbey to see Fr. Cyprian Tansi in search of his secret. It was simple: a life of intercessory prayer for the entire world and total abdication of his own will, submitting totally to the Will of God.
It was in 1962 that a representative of the Cistercians traveled to Africa looking for locations to construct abbeys and formation foundations in Africa. No doubt the reasoning was that there might very well be more Fr. Cyprian Tansis who could be groomed for the contemplative life and, quite possibly, Fr. Tansi could return to his homeland as the Abbot of a new monastery in Nigeria. In 1963 the Abbot at Mount St. Bernard announced that Fr. Tansi would be the new Novice Master of a Cistercian novitiate opening in Cameroon bordering Nigeria to the east. But Fr. Tansi would not live to see it.
On December 19, 1963 he celebrated his silver jubilee as a priest and on the Feast of Epiphany, a month later in 1964 his fellow monks helped plan a Nigerian Mass with Fr. Tansi celebrating a solemn pan-African High Mass with his deacon being fellow countryman Father Mark Ulogu and an Ethiopian subdeacon Abba Samuel serving as subdeacon. The acolytes were two more Nigerians and the altar boy in charge of the thurifer (incense) was an Ibo citizen from Fr. Tansi's region. It was shortly after that when Fr. Cyprian came dow with an illness doctors first though was lumbago and he was sent to bed to rest. The monks and Abbot wanted to move him to more comfortable quarters but Fr. Tansi would not be accommodated in such luxury or attention. He declined and asked only for a light in his dormitory cubicle so he could read and write his thoughts as he prayed. The problem was his illness was not getting better and doctors were alarmed when his swollen legs indicated a deep vein thrombosis. Upon further examination they found a lump in his stomach. Because of his immobility and the hardship on others because of his being sequestered in the dorm, he agreed to be transferred to the Abbey's infirmary. His pain was severe but he endeavored to the end to hide it from all. The Abbot arranged for him to have the last rites and be brought Holy Communion. Soon the pain got so bad that they called for an ambulance to take him to the Leicester Royal Infirmary. As he awaited, he prayed aloud, "My God, my God. Thy will be done. Into Thy hands, O my God." When he reached the English hospital, a nurse was waiting for him and prepping him for operation on his stomach when suddenly he had a massive aneurism with the aorta bursting and he died suddenly at two in the afternoon on January 24, 1964. They held his funeral the next day at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey where there was standing room only as mourners came from all over, including Cardinal Arinze who played an important role in helping promote his candidacy for sainthood.
On July 1976 the Abbey of Our Lady of Mbengwi in Bamenda, Nigeria was elevated to the rank of a Cistercian Abbey twelve and a half years after Blessed Tansi's death. The response was so great, that Archbishop Arinze sought another house in Nigeria for the Cistercians. At the same time old parishioners of Fr. Tansi's parish began lobbying for his beatification because of his heroic life of service to God and his fellow men. On May 25, 1985 Cardinal Arinze was elevated to the cardinalate and he intensified the efforts for Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi's cause. On March 22nd, during the Holy Father's first visit to Nigeria at Cardinal Arinze's invitation, John Paul II officially beatified Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, O.C.S.O. in a lavish ceremony in the Cathedral in Onitsha, with many of those whose vocation they can attribute to Blessed Tansi, in attendance. The tremendous influx of vocations in Nigeria can be related to the fruits of Blessed Cyprian's prayers and fiat. Today, despite decades of turmoil with governments and rebels, the seminaries in Nigeria and surrounding countries are brimming with young men studying for the priesthood and they await the day anxiously when one of their own will be proclaimed the first Nigerian Saint.
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