Li Tim-Oi

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion, a service will be held on May 6 at All Saints’ Chinese Church, in Markham, Ont., near Toronto.

A native of Hong Kong, Ms. Tim-Oi was ordained to the priesthood in 1944; she obtained doctors of divinity at New York’s General Theological Seminary in 1987 and at Toronto’s Trinity College in 1991. She died in Toronto in 1992.

The bishop of Edmonton, Victoria Matthews, the first woman bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, will preside at the service; Bishop Barbara Harris will preach. Bishop Harris, who served the diocese of Massachusetts before retiring in 1991, was the first woman to serve as bishop in the Anglican Communion.