Florence Li Tim Oi
Chinese Anglican deaconess in charge of the wartime congregation at Macau. Bishop Ronald Hall ordained her a priest at Zhaoqing in January 1944; in 1946 the Chinese bishops asked him to accept her resignation from her priestly ministry.
Li Tim Oi was the deaconess in charge of the Anglican congregation at Macau in 1943, when the war kept her bishop from reaching her (Li and Harrison, Much Beloved Daughter ch. 4, pp. 41–42 (Hall to Temple, 4 June 1943)). In January 1944 she travelled to unoccupied China, where Bishop Ronald Hall ordained her a priest at Zhaoqing (Li and Harrison, Much Beloved Daughter ch. 4, pp. 43–45). In 1946 the Chinese House of Bishops asked Hall to accept her resignation from her priestly ministry, which she had already offered (Li and Harrison, Much Beloved Daughter pp. 58–59 (resolution of the House of Bishops, March 1946)). See the First Woman Is Ordained an Anglican Priest.
The Anglican Communion Office’s text of the Lambeth resolution on her case carries her name as a subject heading, with the years 1907 and 1992 (Lambeth Conference 1948, Resolution 113, subject headings). Her own account of her life, given in Toronto in 1984, is in Much Beloved Daughter: The Story of Florence Li.
In the timeline
- 25 January 1944, firm dateThe First Woman Is Ordained an Anglican Priest
In unoccupied China the Anglican bishop of Hong Kong ordains the deaconess Li Tim Oi a priest, so that her wartime congregation in Macau may have the sacraments. The Lambeth Conference of 1948 advises against such ordinations; that of 1978 accepts churches that ordain women.