York Minster to host thanksgiving service for 30 years of women’s priesthood
[Office of the Archbishop of York] The Diocese of York will celebrate 30 years since the first ordination of women as priests in the Church of England at a service of Evensong in York Minster on Tuesday, June 4 at 5:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. Eastern). The service will be livestreamed on YouTube.
York Minster hosted two services in May 1994 at which a total of 39 women were ordained priest to serve in parishes and chaplaincies within the Diocese of York. They had served previously — sometimes for many years or decades — as lay workers, deaconesses (a recognized but non-ordained parish ministry), and since 1987 as deacons, but until 1994 women were not permitted to be ordained as priest and to administer the full range of the church’s sacraments, including presiding at the service of Holy Communion.
The Church of England’s General Synod had agreed in February 1994 to approve the ordination of women as priests, following many years of vigorous debate and campaigning both for and against the proposal.
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