The Revd Jules Cave Bergquist served as our interim Chaplain from October 2025 to March 2026.  The following announcement of her appointment was made on 23 September 2025.

The Right Reverend Anthony Ball, Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to the Holy See, has officially announced the appointment of The Reverend Jules Cave Bergquist as the new Chaplain of the Anglican Centre in Rome. She is expected to begin her duties in early October.

This new role is, in many ways, an evolution of the position of Associate Priest, held until this summer by The Revd Jim Linthicum. In addition to taking up her new responsibilities as Chaplain at the ACR, Mother Jules will retain her role as Area Dean of Italy for the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe as well as being the Bishop’s Ecumenical Officer for Italy. 

After making the announcement, Bishop Anthony Ball said, ‘It is a delight to be able to welcome Jules as the first occupant of this new role at the Anglican Centre in Rome. I am grateful for her willingness to put her extensive ecumenical experience and knowledge of the Catholic Church in Italy alongside her pastoral gifts and fluency in Italian at the service of the Centre and the community here. I look forward to working with her in this new phase of her ministry and planning the celebration of the ACR’s 60th Anniversary Year in 2026.’

Reflecting on her new role, Mother Jules wrote: ‘I am delighted to be joining Bishop Anthony, the staff of the Anglican Centre in Rome and its Anglican and Ecumenical partners and supporters throughout the world at this moment in its history, as we prepare to celebrate 60 years since its founding. My own links with the Anglican Centre go back some 45 years, to when I was a student in Assisi and then Rome, and was grateful for the support and interest of the Directors of that time. I personally knew both Bishop John Moorman, Anglican Observer to the Second Vatican Council and Franciscan scholar, and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who both founded the Centre and caused its first flourishing. So, my interest is personal as well as institutional. My husband Anders Bergquist and I have supported the Centre for many years now, and look forward to contributing to its life and work from somewhat closer quarters in this next phase of its development. [In my student days,] I would help with “waitressing” at big Anglican Centre events. I look forward to joining the staff — in a different role this time — but will reprise that same ministry of welcome and service to all those who come through our doors or reach out to us.’

The Reverend Jules Cave Bergquist was born and brought up in south London.  She went north, to study theology at St John’s College, Durham (a college in the evangelical Anglican tradition). Here she came to know Michael Ramsey.  She went on to do postgraduate work at the Antonianum in Rome (one of the Pontifical Franciscan universities).  The history of the Franciscans and the Poor Clares has continued to fascinate her ever since, and she is currently researching the (often surprising) history of religious communities in Assisi and Umbria after the nineteenth-century reunification of Italy.

After returning to England to complete her ordination training at St Stephen’s House (a college in the Anglo-Catholic tradition), Jules served her title in the diocese of Canterbury.  Since then, she has exercised a pastoral ministry in both parish and college settings, especially in the dioceses of St Albans and London. Among other pioneering roles, she was the first woman Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge. More recently, she has served in pastoral roles in the Diocese of Europe, first in Norway and then in Naples.

Jules also has a special interest and deep experience in the discernment of vocations, serving successively as the Church of England’s National Vocations Officer, and as the Diocesan Director of Ordinands in the Diocese of Oxford.

Alongside her abiding interests in vocational work, and in Franciscan history and spirituality, Jules has been engaged for the last twenty-five years in grassroots ecumenical work in Italy, both at a regional level (with bishops in the Marche), and more recently at national level (representing the Church of England at the forum convened by the Italian Episcopal Conference to bring together all the Churches present in Italy). She will continue as the Area Dean of Italy after taking up her appointment at the Anglican Centre.

Jules has been married for the last 36 years to The Revd Dr Anders Bergquist, who continues as the Vicar of St John’s Wood in London until next June, when he will retire to the home they have bought together in Umbria. They have two adult children and one grandchild, and share an enthusiasm for friendships, cooking, travel, and art history.

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