The Reverend Joyce Bennett, Anglican priest

The Reverend Joyce Bennett, who has died aged 91, made history in December 1971 when she became the first Englishwoman to be ordained to the priesthood of the Anglican Church.

This took place in Hong Kong where she was the founder-principal of the large St Catharine’s Girls’ School and also played a prominent part in the civic life of the colony.

Twenty-seven years earlier, during the dark days of the wartime Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the Bishop, the courageous Ronald Hall, had in desperation ordained a Chinese woman, Florence Li Tim-Oi, to minister to the sacramental needs of congregations bereft of male clergy.

When news of this reached the rest of the Anglican Communion at the end of the war, Hall’s action was universally denounced and Li Tim-Oi felt constrained to suspend her priestly ministry until it might be officially approved.

It was not until the 1960s that the issue of women priests returned to the Church’s agenda where it continued to be sharply divisive.

Early in 1971, however, the international Anglican Consultative Council declared there to be no theological objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood and that it would not look askance at any province that chose to move in this direction.

Bishop Gilbert Baker, who had succeeded Hall at Hong Kong, lost no time in choosing Joyce Bennett and a Chinese woman for ordination by the end of that year. Many years passed before their ministries were accepted elsewhere and it was not until 1994 that the Church of England ordained any women.

By this time Joyce Bennett had returned to London where she exercised a long retirement ministry to a Chinese congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields, having been a beacon of hope for many women the world over who had felt called to the priesthood.

Joyce Mary Bennett was born in London on November 25 1923. She was head girl at Burlington School and went from there to Westfield College in Hampstead to take a London University degree in History and a diploma in Education.

In 1949, after a few years of teaching in state schools, she offered her services to the Church Missionary Society which sent her to Hong Kong for work in Christian education.

She taught at St Stephen’s Girls’ College until 1968 and, having returned to England to take a diploma in Theology at King’s College, London, was admitted as a deacon to serve additionally as a curate at St Thomas’s Church, Kowloon, and as a lecturer at the inter-church theological seminary.

Three years earlier she had been chosen to be the principal of an Anglo-Chinese girls’ school – a government-funded venture in which she became involved from the time of its early construction. The name St Catharine’s reflected her own birthday saint.

The school eventually attracted more than 1,000 pupils with a teaching staff of 60, and became one of the colony’s leading educational institutions, grounded in Christian values while respectful of cultural differences. She assisted at the nearby St Barnabas church, preaching at least once every month.

Meanwhile her gifts and leadership skills had taken her to membership of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, its public accounts committee, an advisory committee on corruption and a juvenile court advisory panel. In 1976 she became a JP. At the same time she campaigned ceaselessly for free education for all and against the practice of buying places in schools.

The sizeable Chinese congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields had been formed in the 1960s to meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of central London’s Chinese community, and on her retirement from Hong Kong Joyce Bennett played an important part in its life, assisted by her ability to speak Cantonese.

It was not until women priests had been accepted in England, however, that she exercised a sacramental ministry in London, except on one occasion when she celebrated Holy Communion in Church House, Westminster, before an annual meeting of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.

This caused a considerable furore and Archbishop Robert Runcie, visiting Canada at the time, expressed his dismay. Further invitations were declined.

Joyce Bennett was rarely without a smile, but there could be exceptions, as when two teachers, one British the other Chinese, came to her for adjudication in a quarrel. Her response was to weep at their bitterness. The following morning they returned, chastened and reconciled.

She was appointed OBE in 1971 and Hong Kong University awarded her an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences.

She was unmarried.

The Reverend Joyce Bennett, born November 25 1923, died July 11 2015