A trailblazing church leader, Archdeacon Arnold Hollis, was an impassioned preacher with a firebrand streak who held the church as well as the community to account.

Dr Hollis, the long-serving rector of St James’s Anglican Church in Sandys, broke barriers as the first Bermudian to be sponsored by the Synod of the Diocese to train for Holy Orders in 1956, during a time when discrimination and racial segregation were firmly entrenched.

Throughout his life, Dr Hollis took a stand against inequality.

The Right Reverend Nicholas Dill, the Anglican Bishop of Bermuda, said: “Dr Hollis was a highly educated and qualified theologian and priest of great experience, which he brought home to Bermuda.

“Some of it was welcomed and some was resisted. He was no respecter of persons and could be forthright and at times formidable in his views, especially on issues of justice and righteousness.”

In 2009, when his youngest daughter, Joanna Hollis, was ordained as deacon in a US Episcopal church — shortly after the Synod in Bermuda voted for the ordination of women — Dr Hollis recalled in an interview with The Royal Gazette: “Even before I realised that my daughter had this leaning to serving God and his church, I had always been a proponent of women being more visible in the church and I paid a penalty. I suffered rejection by the church because of that.”

Reverend Hollis became the first woman Anglican priest in Bermuda in 2010, overturning centuries of male domination.

Dr Hollis was appointed to St James’s Church in 1977 and became Archdeacon of Bermuda in 1997, an office he held for seven years. He was succeeded in 2004 by Andrew William Doughty.

Dr Hollis could be blunt when it came to assessing church politics, and in a 2005 commentary headlined “The price of leadership”, he criticised what he saw as his tenure being cut short.

In August 2020, he retired as rector, closing 43 years of service in his Somerset community.

Bishop Dill said: “He had a sense of wonder that God should have called and used him in his service, with a sense of his own unworthiness — yet with an awareness that, whilst he was on this Earth, he had a place and a purpose from God.”

Dr Hollis’s calling began early. He recalled: “From a very young boy I was fascinated by religion and faith. I was intrigued by the way the Church of England, as it was called back then, conducted their services.”

He acknowledged that aspirations for the priesthood ran against his times: “Here was this little Black kid, trying to even think that he could be a minister in what was considered a White, elite church, so to speak.”

Dr Hollis became a primary schoolteacher, but his chance came in 1956 when friends in the church helped him to enter Codrington Theological College in Barbados.

His training and curacy in England followed. Over two years, he moved from a deacon to a priest.

Dr Hollis told the Gazette: “At the end of this process, I wrote back to the Bishop in Bermuda inquiring about when to come home — and the response I received was that there was no available place.

“That was not always the truth, but there was indeed no place for me. That went on for 17 years. I was told that I could stay in England or go to the West Indies.

“In my annoyance, I decided to go to the West Indies. I intended to go back to Barbados, until a position in a mission church was offered to me in Guyana.”

His work with indigenous people in the rainforests of the South American country made it “a joy to minister”, Dr Hollis recalled.

He returned to serve in England. In 1969, he married his wife, Janice, and the couple moved to the US to minister in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Throughout, Dr Hollis unsuccessfully applied to return home to work.

“Each time I came home, I would inquire to check and see what was available for me here in Bermuda and I would receive the same response every time. Apparently I was not qualified.”

In August 1997, when Dr Hollis delivered a hard-hitting sermon at the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity in Hamilton, he referenced his own time in the wilderness.

At the service marking the first anniversary of the death of Frederick Wade, the late leader of the Progressive Labour Party, Dr Hollis pulled no punches in criticising what he saw the island’s culture of false appearances.

In an address likened to the fiery AME style rather than an Anglican cleric’s, Dr Hollis added: “We are driving our young people into exile, just as I was driven into exile, by insisting that they have so many years' experience before they are able to serve in their homeland.”

As Dr Hollis waited to come home as a young priest, he accrued a bachelor’s degree in sociology, two masters of divinity and a doctorate in parish ministry and church administration — only to be told when he next applied for a position in Bermuda that he was now too qualified.

When two vacancies appeared in 1976, one in St George’s and one in Sandys, neither appeared willing to hire him.

Eventually Sir John Swan, the former premier, who was then responsible for immigration, intervened — making it clear that he would not consider any work permit applications for either position.

Dr Hollis was accepted by Sandys Parish vestry the following year.

Bishop Dill said: “In his heyday, St James’s church was an active and engaged community at the heart of Sandys — whether it was in outreach through the prisons or a gathering place for the whole community with services, plays, fairs, with outreach to all, rich and poor, local and visitor.

“It was at the centre of West End life — ecumenically minded and focused. At the helm, Dr Hollis was an advocate for the underdog and the marginalised, having himself experienced racial and social prejudice in his life and ministry.

“He would recall with tears the injustices that he and many faced in our community and even in the church, and sought to protect and uphold those who did not have a voice. He was highly supportive of the ‘Bermudianisation’ of the church. He was a great thinker, and a thoughtful preacher.

“Even after retirement, he would write a sermon each week to keep himself fresh in the faith, ready when called upon to share the word.”

Bishop Dill added: “He was immensely proud of his family — and utterly devoted to his wife, Janice [‘Jan’], his angel. Her death left an aching hole in his heart. He will be for ever remembered.”

Dr Hollis said upon retirement: “My faith kept me going through it all.”

He said he hoped his legacy would be “that I did my very best to share the good news of the kingdom of God with those who I came into contact with”.

“That was my life’s mission and my greatest hope.”

• Archdeacon Arnold Thaddeus Hollis, longstanding rector at St James’s Anglican Church, was born on July 9, 1933. He died in January 2026, aged 92