Li Tim-Oi

Who was Li Tim-Oi?

Florence Li Tim-Oi was the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion. Already appointed as a deacon to serve in the colony of Macau at the Macau Protestant Chapel, she was ordained priest on 25 January 1944, by Ronald Hall, Bishop of Victoria, in response to the crisis among Anglican Christians in China caused by the Japanese invasion. Since it was to be thirty years before any Anglican church regularised the ordination of women, her ordination was controversial and she resigned her licence after the end of the war. When Hong Kong ordained two further women priests in 1971, she was officially recognised as a priest in the diocese. She was appointed an honorary assistant priest in Toronto in 1983, where she spent the remainder of her life.

In 2003, the Episcopal Church fixed January 24 as her feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, based on the eve of the anniversary of her ordination. In 2007, the Anglican Communion celebrated the Centennial of her birth.