AS AN Oxford graduate, an acoustic guitarist and with personal experience of the pain of divorce, the Rev Sarah Jones had all the credentials to be the perfect priest in the modern-day Church of England.

This week, her parishioners in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, were surprised to learn that her credentials were even stronger than they had suspected.

Ms Jones, 43, has been a woman for just ten years. She was born, baptised as a Roman Catholic, had girlfriends and married, all as Colin Jones.

But years of confusion, followed by a conviction that she should have been born a woman, led to a sex change operation.

The Bishop of Hereford, the Right Rev Anthony Priddis, was aware of her past when he ordained her as deacon last July and appointed her assistant curate of the Ross team ministry. He will have no hesitation in priesting her in September.

Members of the ordained and lay ministry teams were told before her appointment. But other parishioners were informed only on Monday.

Ms Jones left a meeting while the information was relayed to wardens of 14 churches in the area and, when she returned, was greeted with a round of applause. The Hereford Diocese decided to go public after news of Ms Jones’s past was leaked to the press.

Technically, Ms Jones could be ordained a bishop, making her the first woman bishop in the Church of England, because legally she is a man. However, she intends to apply for gender realignment under the Gender Recognition Act, which comes into force in April. That would give her a new birth certificate and make it impossible for her to be elevated into the episcopate until the Church votes to ordain women bishops.

Ms Jones, who has played at folk clubs and festivals on the acoustic music scene, studied experimental psychology at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, before training for the ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge.

She married when she was about 20 and the couple divorced amicably a few years later, without children.

Ms Jones said that she had the sex-change operation at 33 but was 31 when she made the change socially.

She had been attracted to the Anglican Church by friends at college in Sheffield, where she studied for A levels as a mature student. “Once I had settled down I really felt God was calling me to the priesthood,” she said.

Realisation of her gender identity was a gradual process: “When we got married, that was fine. I was not trying to fix anything or cure anything by getting married.

“It was probably when I was in my mid-twenties that it really got to be an issue that I absolutely had to address.”

Her need to address the issue was aided by the response in the wider world. Bus drivers would try to chat her up, even when dressed as a man, and often new acquaintances would treat her as a woman.

It had never occurred to her that, with a legal identity still as a man, she could be in line to be a bishop. “What I am concentrating on is being a good curate. I love the people I work with and I love the area.” Bishop Priddis said: “We are quite sure that no one has done anything wrong. Sarah has become a much-loved curate in the short time she has been part of the Ross team.”

CHANGED CLERGY

• Mark Savage, Vicar at St Cuthbert’s in Bedlington, Northumberland, a father of two now called Helen, left the Church last year to have sex-change operation
  
  
• In 2002, the Rev Dian Parry, formerly a bearded blacksmith called Bill, sued a church in South Wales when he was banned from using the ladies’ lavatory. He had earlier been forced to resign as a non-conformist minister because he had started to live as a woman
  
  
• The Rev Peter Stone, twice-divorced Vicar at St Philip’s, Upper Stratton, Swindon, and father of a daughter, was in 2000 the first serving vicar to have a sex change and is now the Rev Carol Ann Stone

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