Pope Francis bid farewell to UK Ambassador to the Holy See Sally Jane Axworthy on June 21, 2021.

As announced last November, Chris Trott has been appointed Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Holy See and is now assuming the post.

Chris Trott has been a British diplomat since 1991 and was most recently the Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan from August 2016 until March 2019. He has worked in Burma, Japan, Afghanistan, the South Pacific, and both West and Southern Africa. In 2007 he was appointed as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Senegal, accredited also to Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mali. In 2011 he was appointed as Consul General in Cape Town, South Africa, followed by a short stint in Honiara as High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Nauru.

Among various roles in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London, he worked as Deputy Head of the Human Rights department and as Deputy in a then newly formed unit in DFID designed to address stabilization post-conflict.

Chris is married with 2 children and is a Freeman of the Commune of Timbuktu.

Mrs. Axworthy joined the Foreign Office in 1986. In 1987 she was a Desk Officer covering Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia. From 1988 until 1989 she spent a year learning Russian in preparation for her posting to Moscow in 1989 as a Third Secretary, Commercial. She remained in Moscow until 1991 when she was transferred to Kiev as a Second Secretary, Economic.

From 1993-1994 Axworthy returned to London as Head of the Political Section in the UN Directorate. After this, until 1996 she was seconded to the German Foreign Ministry returning to the FCO but remaining in Germany in Berlin as First Secretary. For two years from 1998, she was head of the Turkey, Cyprus & Malta Section before being posted to Government Office South West as Assistant Director.

From 2011 to 2015 she returned to London where she worked in the FCO on African affairs.

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