Yesterday I was at CMS in Oxford for a meeting and we met in the Li Tim-Oi room. I'd never heard of her either but Li Tim-Oi was the first woman to be ordained in the Anglican Church in January 1944.

Li Tim-Oi was born in Hong Kong in 1907 at a time when a bowl of ash was usually kept nearby during a birth, ready to smother the baby if it was born a girl. Fortunately Li Tim-Oi’s father was a Christian who valued his daughter; her name means ‘Much Beloved’. In 1931 she attended the ordination of an English deaconess in Hong Kong cathedral, and felt called by God to the ministry. She was ordained deacon herself in 1941 and led a church in Macao which was full of refugees from war-torn China. A priest would come over to her church to preside for her at the Eucharist, but when this was no longer possible because of the war, the Bishop of Hong Kong ordained her priest in 1944. At the time he recognised that this was as momentous a step as Paul baptising the Gentile Cornelius in Acts 10. Just as Paul recognised that God had already given Cornelius the gift of the Spirit, the Bishop was acknowledging that God had already called Li Tim-Oi to be a priest – and who was he to argue?

The Li Tim-Oi Foundation was set up by Li Tim-Oi’s sister and it now provides grants to women in the Global South who are training for ministry in the Anglican Church. You can read some of their stories and find out more about Li Tim-Oi on the Foundation’s website.