First Female Minister for Next Church of Scotland Moderator

The next moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has been named as the Rev Sheilagh Kesting - the first female minister to take up the post.

Kesting, 53, from Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis, is Secretary of the Church of Scotland Committee on Ecumenical Relations.

She has already revealed her intention to focus on Christian unity during her time as Moderator.

"I will definitely be involved in trying to reach out to other Christian denominations. That will be the No 1 priority for me," said the Rev Kesting after the announcement came that she is to serve as Moderator of the church's general assembly from 2007 to 2008.

"From a very early age I became aware of the tensions between the churches. That didn't seem to me to be right," Kesting was quoted as saying by The Scotsman newspaper.

"Christians should be able to work together and live together."

She will succeed current incumbent, the Rev Alan McDonald, in May, 2007.

Kesting becomes the second female Moderator of the General Assembly after Dr Alison Elliot in 2004 but the first ordained minister.

Educated at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway and Edinburgh University, the moderator designate spent her probationary period in St John's Renfield Church in Glasgow.

She was inducted to Overtown Parish Church, Lanarkshire in 1980, just as the steel works were closing.

In 1986, Kesting was inducted to the newly united congregation of St Andrew's High, Musselburgh, in East Lothian. She has been secretary to the Committee on Ecumenical Relations since 1993.