RIGHT ROYAL APPOINTMENT!

Jun 10 2008 Paisley Daily Express

HIGH-PROFILE Minister Lorna Hood will rub shoulders with royalty in her new job as a chaplain to the Queen.

Mrs Hood was delighted to take up the out-of-the-blue offer, which comes with its own distinctive red cassock.

The new job makes the popular Renfrew North Parish Church minister an official member of Her Majesty’s Ecclesiastical Household.

This means one of Mrs Hood’s duties will be to preach before the monarch at Crathie Kirk, where the Queen worships when she is staying at Balmoral Castle, and on other royal occasions in Scotland.

A minister of the Church of Scotland, Mrs Hood, 55, said her new honour was totally unexpected, although it won’t interfere with her job at Renfrew North.

Asked why she thought she had been chosen by the Queen to be one of her chaplains, she said: “Pass! I’m delighted but amazed and totally surprised.”

The first hint that something special was about to happen came when Kilmarnock-born Mrs Hood received a telephone call from the Dean of the Chapel Royal.

She explained: “I was asked if I would accept the appointment, and I said yes.

“Two days later, a letter arrived from Buckingham Palace saying the Queen was appointing me as one of her Chaplains in Scotland.”

Mrs Hood is well known for her distinguished contribution to the life of the Church of Scotland nationally and locally, including as Moderator of the then Paisley Presbytery.

As well as the red cassock – which is currently being made by an ecclesiastical tailor in Newcastle, and will be billed to Buckingham Palace – Mrs Hood, who will remain a royal chaplain until she is 70, gets to wear a special clerical shirt when she is in “civvies.”

This is a deep purple colour and will mark her out to those in the know as a royal chaplain.

It is this shirt that Mrs Hood will be wearing along with her clerical collar when she is presented to the Queen at a garden party at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, at the beginning of next month.

Despite serving almost 30 years as a minister who has vast experience of people, Mrs Hood said she still felt very nervous at the thought of meeting the Queen.

“She’s the Queen after all!” she joked.

There to support her, however, will be husband Peter, 53. And there will be moral support too from daughter Laura, 24, a doctor at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, and from son Michael, 19, a law student at Aberdeen University.

“They are delighted for me,” said Mrs Hood.