Dominic Ignatius Ekandem 1917-1995

The Prince Who Became a Cardinal, the Vanguard of Catholicism in Nigeria

A phenomenon seldom recognised in the media of Western Europe and North America is the extraordinary growth of the Catholic Church of South America and sub-Saharan Africa during the last five decades, and nowhere more than in Nigeria. A key figure in that country and in that growth, up to his death in 1995, was Cardinal Ekandem, the first Anglophone West-African bishop - the first of many - and an outstanding churchman of the 20th Century. Fr Michael Edem's scholarly biography of the Cardinal is a fascinating account of a journey from life in a traditional African village to the consistory of cardinals of the Catholic Church in Rome. It will be of enormous interest to a wider public for the author's personal knowledge of the cardinal and of the Efik/Ibibio culture in which they both grew up.