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Bernardin Gantin was born on 8 May 1922 in Toffo, in the south of French Dahomey (later the Republic of Dahomey and today Benin). He received his early education in local Catholic mission schools and entered the seminary at Ouidah, long the principal center of priestly formation in the territory. After philosophical and theological studies he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Cotonou on 14 January 1951. His superiors sent him to Rome, where he studied at the Pontifical Urban University and completed work in theology and canon law. That Roman training, together with pastoral experience at home, shaped a career that would move between the local church of West Africa and the central administration of the Holy See.

On returning to Dahomey he taught in the seminary and served in diocesan posts. In December 1956 Pope Pius XII named him titular bishop of Tipasa in Mauretania and auxiliary bishop of Cotonou; he was consecrated in February 1957, still in his mid-thirties and among the younger members of the African hierarchy. In January 1960 he became Archbishop of Cotonou, one of the first indigenous residential archbishops in francophone West Africa, taking office as the colony moved toward independence. He attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and took part in debates on the missionary church and the standing of local churches. In 1971 Pope Paul VI called him to Rome as a senior official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the curial department that oversaw Catholic missions.

Paul VI created him a cardinal in the consistory of 27 June 1977, with the deaconry of Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re. He subsequently presided over the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. In 1984 Pope John Paul II appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, an office he held until 1998, and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. From those posts he influenced the choice of bishops across the Latin church and dealt with the Latin American episcopate during years of political conflict and theological controversy. In 1986 he was raised to the rank of cardinal-bishop of the suburbicarian see of Palestrina. From 1993 to 2002 he served as Dean of the College of Cardinals, the first African to hold that dignity, and therefore also held the title of Ostia.

After he turned eighty in 2002 he resigned as Dean and returned to Benin. He died in Paris on 13 May 2008 while receiving medical care. Funeral rites were celebrated in Saint Peter’s Basilica before his remains were taken back to Benin. Gantin was a diocesan priest, not a member of a religious order; as a Latin-rite cleric he lived a celibate life and had neither spouse nor children. He was never Bishop of Rome and never held an Eastern patriarchal see. He has not been beatified or canonized and has no liturgical feast or recognized patronages. His historical importance lies in the combination of early African episcopal leadership with long tenure in some of the most powerful offices of the Roman Curia, and in his role as a personal and institutional link between the churches of Africa and the Holy See in the second half of the twentieth century.

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