Dominic Ignatius Ekandem 1917-1995

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 Efiok/Ibibio culture in which they both grew up.