woman of the cloth

plural women of the cloth

1. rareChristianityA female member of the clergy.

   2 more examples

   What many didn’t know at the time is that this incredible woman of the cloth had left the side of her own ailing mother to do what she felt was the only thing she could do: confess the sins of her predecessors, beg for forgiveness of those wronged, and, in so doing, help to heal the wounds of a community.

   2020 July 24, Karen Gibson, “This precious moment of healing”, in Church Times

   “I can’t quite get my head round the idea that Vennells is a woman of the cloth,” Camilla Long wrote in The Sunday Times: “A priest who’s paid £700,000 a year? Who’s then perfectly happy to sit by while thousands of her own employees are persecuted, arrested, slung in jail, or, in at least four horrific cases, kill themselves? And then, even after it began to emerge they might not be guilty, still demonise them, dismissing them, in one email that drew gasps, as ‘inadequate’ people who ‘bored’ her? As a friend said: ‘What sort of Christian is she?’”

   2024 May 31, “Press: Vennells appears in the court of the columnists”, in Church Times

   Synonyms: clergywoman