Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin

A Jamaica-born female Anglican priest has been appointed chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II.

The Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, formerly of the St Francis Mission, Glendevon, St James, will be among the clergy who will preach in the Queen's Chapel at St James Palace, London.

Reverend Hudson-Wilkin was trained as an officer in the Church Army, the evangelistic arm of the Anglican Church, and served at St Francis, which is an arm of the St James Parish Church, before moving to live in London where she subsequently married Kenneth Wilkin, who was also trained in the Church Army.

Later, they both became ordained ministers. She was accepted for Holy Orders in 1994 when the Church of England first admitted women into the priesthood.

Reverend Hudson-Wilkin is the vicar of a congregation in the Diocese of London. Her husband is the chaplain at Holloway women's prison.

She last visited the island in October 2007 when she accompanied the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend John Sentamu, as his chaplain on his visit to the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in observance of the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.