From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdeaconessdea‧con‧ess /ˌdiːkəˈnes $ ˈdiːkənəs/ noun [countable] RRCRRCa female religious official, in some Christian churches, who is just below the rank of a priest
Examples from the Corpus
deaconess• Later while training as a deaconess in London she saw his funeral in 1912.• Because my grandmother was active in the church and had been a deaconess, she knew a lot of people.• An elderly deaconess who refused to denounce her faith during a riot against Christians.• So she calmly sat down with deaconess Pat Phillips to plan the funeral. 