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The Reverend Doctor Joanne Grenfell, 33 (pictured on the previous page), was a teenager when she began to think about becoming an Anglican priest. But it was only when she met the man who is now her husband, James, 36, that the idea crystallised and took hold. Then a lecturer in English Literature at Oriel College, Oxford, she thought she wanted to be an academic and that she would put off priesthood for a few more years.

"Then I met my husband, who had been accepted for training and ordination, and he said, ‘Why do you keep putting this off? Why not do it now, and do it together?’ and I thought: he’s right." Making a timely leap of faith, she gave up her job before she knew that she had been accepted to train at Westcott House in Cambridge. In June 2000, she was ordained at Liverpool Cathedral, in a service that moved her father to tears.

Now, she and her husband share the title of Priest in Charge of the Manor Ecumenical Parish in Sheffield, and leadership of the five-strong church team. Her sex is not an issue. She gets the impression, she says, that when it comes to women priests, the poorer the area, the less of an issue it is.

"It’s been easier for my generation. I wasn’t part of the battle to make it happen. There is a bit of a feeling that ‘we’ve got a vicar and the vicar has a wife, and she’s a vicar too’, so you can feel a bit pigeonholed at times, but since becoming a mother I feel a strong sense of purpose. Other mothers feel they can approach me about things – their anxieties, and hopes for their children. Several have spoken to me about miscarriages: it’s offloading a burden to them."

While her husband works full time, Joanne combines it with mothering Samuel, 2, and Imogen, now 10 months. Breastfeeding her children in church was no big deal, simply a practicality.

"I’ve always had them at the back of the church in case they needed to be fed, and I’ve never had any negative reaction. The previous vicar’s wife breast-fed in church as well. Lots of people smile and say, ‘He’s having his steak and chips!’"

THE PIONEER PRIEST

The career of Lucy Winkett, 37, Canon Precentor of St Paul’s Cathedral, has not been without controversy: her arrival caused consternation in some quarters at St Paul’s, where she was the first female priest in the cathedral’s history. Her tears at an apparent snub by the cathedral’s male servers were captured in a BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary. Since then, she has risen through the ranks to become Precentor, overseeing liturgy and music in the cathedral, and she is now one of three ordained women in a team of eight.

"For me, coming here was just moving jobs; it’s other people who attach a meaning to that and tell you what it means. It’s tough if there’s only one woman in a situation, particularly if it’s new for an institution, and it was new for St Paul’s. The important thing is that women are seen as perfectly normal parts of the church." It is a source of pride to her that St Paul’s is now "at the forefront of women’s ministry in cathedrals" in terms of ordained priests.

"All of us are created in the image of God," she says, "so every permutation of human being must be able to represent Christ."

A Cambridge history graduate and talented soprano, Winkett originally planned a career in music. But her calling came suddenly to her, as she sat at Evensong in her parents’ parish church at Chalfont St Peter. Though the details of the sermon now elude her, she remembers vividly one moment during it when something in her just clicked, "and I absolutely knew that that was what I was going to do". It was a decision also affected by the death of her then-boyfriend in a climbing accident, which changed her girlhood ambition to get a "job, house, man and car". She was ordained in 1995 and is proud that, 11 years after women began to be ordained, they are simply being priests – baptising, marrying and burying people.

"It’s not just about surviving in an institution that isn’t sure if it wanted you," she points out. "It’s about flourishing as a priest and doing the work of God."

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