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Canon Dr Susan Cole-King
The Independent
Saturday, 7 April 2001
Susan Mary Wilson, medical practitioner and priest: born Eighton, Co Durham 23 April 1934; admitted as deaconess 1986, ordained deacon 1987, ordained priest of the Episcopalian Church 1987; Honorary Canon, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford 1995-2001; married 1955 Paul Cole-King (three sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1980); died Brisbane, Queensland 8 February 2001.
Susan Cole-King visited most countries in the developing world during the 1980s advising governments on primary health care. As Senior Health Adviser to Unicef from 1981 to 1983, and then as a consultant, she spent eight months of the year travelling to remote parts of the world. She was also one of the first English women to be ordained priest and sacrificed much for this.
She was born Susan Wilson in 1934 in Eighton, Co Durham, where her father, Leonard Wilson, was vicar. Soon afterwards the family moved to Hong Kong and then to Singapore, where Leonard Wilson had been sent as Bishop.
When the Japanese invaded, Susan, aged eight, escaped with her mother and two younger brothers on a crowded boat to Australia; there her third brother was born. Bishop Wilson was imprisoned and tortured in the notorious Changi Jail and for four years his family did not know whether he was alive or dead. As the war ended Susan's mother received a message to say that they must listen to the radio and Susan often recalled the incredible excitement of tuning in and hearing her beloved father's voice.
As a young girl Susan Wilson developed an interest in Africa and as a teenager met the President of Malawi, Dr Hastings Banda. Malawi was then the poorest country in the world and Susan decided that was where she wanted to be. After qualifying as a doctor in 1962, with characteristic directness she wrote to Banda to ask if there was anything she and her teacher husband Paul Cole-King, whom she had married in 1955, could do in Malawi. So began nine years of creative work in primary health care which has improved the quality of life of countless children around the world. Susan Cole-King's pioneering work became a model followed by countries not only in Africa but world-wide.
In 1973, she accepted an invitation from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University to join a new research project on health planning and aid in developing countries. This work involved consultancies for the World Bank and World Health Organisation and researching the work of aid agencies. At the end of seven years, Cole-King was invited to work for WHO in Geneva. By this time her marriage had been dissolved and her four children were teenagers, and she felt free to go to Switzerland.
Cole-King did not enjoy working for the WHO, where the political wranglings and extravagant life style jarred intolerably. In 1981 she joined Unicef. She found the move to New York liberating. She brought to her new job the determination to serve poor communities that threaded through the whole of her life. Despite the heavy demands of travel and organising international seminars, she enjoyed the work.
In New York Cole-King found the Church to be open, relevant and life-giving. While on retreat she was shocked to find that she was beginning to have thoughts about ordination. It took a year before she could talk to anyone about it. She trained for the priesthood at the General Seminary in New York. Not many theological students pay their fees by spending their vacations doing consultancy work for Unicef in China and the Yemen.
Cole-King was ordained priest in the Episcopal Church of All Angels in New York on 18 May 1987. Following ordination she spent two years running a parish project for the homeless. Her capacity for empathy with the marginalised was striking.
She returned to England in 1989 to support the Movement for the Ordination of Women in the Church of England. After many months she was given permission to work as a deacon in the parish of Dorchester and two years later was made deacon in charge of the parish of Drayton in Oxfordshire, on condition that she did not publicly celebrate the Eucharist, a condition she scrupulously obeyed.
Cole-King experienced considerable pain during the five years she was not allowed to celebrate the Eucharist but she seldom allowed this to show. Her rich spiritual life and perceptiveness meant she was in demand as a spiritual director and conductor of retreats. For her own refreshment she often headed for Tymawr Convent in Monmouth. Remarkably she topped the clergy poll in the Diocese of Oxford for election to the General Synod, where she served for eight years and was vice-chair of the Board for Social Responsibility. In 1995 she was made an honorary canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
Susan Cole-King "retired" to Salisbury in 1997 so that she could more widely pursue her interests in spirituality and her passion for justice for the world's poor. She was particularly moved by a visit of the Roman Catholic Sri Lankan priest Tissa Balasuriya and his attack on globalisation, which he described as "global apartheid". When it was the turn of the Japanese bishops to lead the worship for the Lambeth Conference in 1998, Cole-King was asked to preach. From her father, who after surviving torture in Changi Jail was able to confirm one of his jailers, she had learnt much about reconciliation. Several bishops said afterwards that for them her sermon was the highlight of the conference.
It was not surprising that Susan Cole-King did not hesitate when asked by the Bishop of Southern Malawi to return there to help "do something about spirituality and Aids". Last year she spent four months working in Malawi with headteachers, clergy and women's leaders and was planning to return this year to extend the work throughout Malawi.
Susan Cole-King was an accomplished artist and gardener, and her gifts of creativity, determination and reticence were daily reminders of her closeness to the God she lived to serve.
By Jane Arden
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