Ascension Day 22 May 1941
The photograph shows Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok, her father and Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination as Deacon in the Cathedral in Hong Kong.
The story of
Li Tim-oi
The Reverend Florence Li Tim-Oi was born on 5th May 1907 in the fishing village of Aberdeen on Hong Kong island.
When she was born in May 1907, Li Tim-Oi’s father named her “Much Beloved” because he valued her as a daughter, even if the prevailing culture placed a greater value on sons.
When she was baptised as a student, Tim-Oi chose the name ‘Florence’ after Florence Nightingale, the famous 19th century English nurse known as ‘The Lady of the Lamp’. In 1931, while at the ordination of a deaconess in Hong Kong Cathedral, she heard and responded to the call to ministry.
Tim-Oi ‘s church paid for her to take a four-year course at a theological college in Canton. She was made Deacon on Ascension Day 1941 and was given charge of the Anglican congregation in the Portuguese colony of Macao, thronged with refugees from war-torn China.
For three years, Tim-Oi was licensed to preside at the Eucharist by her Chinese Bishop, Gilbert Mok, when male priests could no longer travel from the Japanese-occupied territory to take services for her.
When the then Bishop of Hong Kong, an Englishman named R O Hall, heard of this arrangement, he was troubled that a deacon was taking on the role reserved for priests. The Bishop asked Tim-Oi to meet him in Free China, where, on 25th January 1944, he ordained her ‘a priest in the Church of God’. He felt that this was as momentous a step as when the Apostle Peter baptised the Gentile Cornelius. Just as St Peter recognised that God had already given Cornelius the Baptismal gift of the Holy Spirit, so Bishop Hall felt that he was merely confirming what God had already done in giving Tim-Oi the gift of priestly ministry.
When news of Tim-Oi’s ordination spread to England, there were calls for Bishop Hall’s resignation. Bishop Hall was prepared to resign, but to defuse the controversy, Tim-Oi surrendered her priest’s licence, but not her Holy Orders, the knowledge of which carried her through years of hardship during the Maoist persecution.
In time, Tim-Oi resumed the practice of her priesthood in the Church in China, and later in Toronto, when she retired in 1981. She was awarded Doctorates of Divinity by the General Theological Seminary, New York, and Trinity College, Toronto.
The Reverend Florence Li Tim-Oi died on 26th February 1992 in Toronto and is buried there.
How Li Tim-Oi is commemorated across the world
In the United States of America
On 4th August 2003 in Minneapolis, in the state of Minnesota, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church agreed to include the Anniversary of the Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi’s priesting in the Church’s Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, to be observed on 24th January.
St. George’s Episcopal Church, in Dayton, Ohio has chosen Florence Li Tim-Oi as one of two ‘saints’ from the 20th century to honour with a stained-glass window in their church building. The design (on the right) recalls how she kept the faith in Red China, even when she was ordered to feed chickens and banned from ministering to her fellow Christians.
Li Tim-Oi has been similarly honoured in stained-glass windows in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in Chautauqua, New York and in St Paul’s School for Girls in Brocklandville, Maryland. In a frieze at St Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, she can be seen dancing with Eleanor Roosevelt!
In Canada
In June 2004 the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada agreed to include the Revd Dr Florence Li Tim-Oi in the Calendar of Holy Persons in their Book of Alternative Services. She is mentioned on the anniversary of her death, 26th February 1992. Li Tim Oi is also honoured in a stained-glass window in St. Mary’s Kerrisdale, Vancouver.
Tim-Oi appears alongside the former Archbishop of Capetown, Desmond Tutu, in a stained-glass window in Grace Church on the Hill in Toronto. The four Chinese parishes of the Diocese of Toronto also regularly celebrate the life and accomplishments of the Revd Dr Florence Li Tim-Oi.
The Florence Li Tim-Oi Memorial Reading Room and Archives were created by Renison University College, part of the University of Waterloo, Canada.
In England
On the Golden Jubilee of Li Tim-Oi’s priesting in 1994, Archbishop Donald Coggan launched the Li Tim-Oi Foundation in St Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Trafalgar Square, London. Archbishop Coggan also dedicated a Prayer Board in her memory, which continues to carry the expressions of thanksgiving and the heartfelt requests of many.
On the Diamond Jubilee of her priesting, an icon of Li Tim Oi was dedicated at St Martin-in-the-Fields. It can be seen on the lower level of the church, in the Dick Sheppard Chapel, placed there because of Dick Sheppard’s pioneering support of the ordination of women in the Church of England.
Copies of the icon can be made to order. To enquire, email admin@ltof.org.uk
Following the major development of St Martin-in-the-Fields, a meeting room was named in honour of Li Tim-Oi. Another meeting room has also been named after her in the new Church Mission Society headquarters in Cowley, Oxford.
Dr Robert Browne from Houston tells Li Tim-Oi’s story in a video he made in 1987 when they visited Hepu, the parish in China where she ministered after the Second World War.
‘It takes one woman’, an illustrated booklet about the Rev Florence Li Tim-Oi, is available by sending a Stamped Addressed C5 Envelope to The Knowle, Deddington, Banbury OX15 0TB.
After Li Tim-Oi died in 1992, Dr Robert Browne interviewed Tim-Oi’s sister Rita, and others who had known her in China and Toronto. He called the video ‘Beyond Hepu’.