Lorna Hood

Elizabeth Lorna Hood is a minister of the Church of Scotland and an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen. On 30 October 2012 she was nominated to be Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 2013–14; she was duly formally elected as Moderator on the 18 May 2013 – the first day of the General Assembly's week-long annual session.

Hood was born in Irvine, Ayrshire in 1953. She was educated at Kilmarnock Academy and the University of Glasgow, where she graduated Master of Arts in 1974 and Bachelor of Divinity in 1977. She was ordained by the Church of Scotland's Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1978 whilst serving as Assistant Minister at St Ninian's Church in Corstorphine, Edinburgh. She was inducted to her current charge of the North Parish Church in Renfrew in June 1979. In 2008 she was appointed to be one of ten Chaplains to The Queen in Scotland.

In February 2013 she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.

In 2013 Lorna Hood accepted Honorary Membership of the Irvine Burns Club offered in recognition of her achievements, links with Ayrshire and her interest in the life and legacy of Robert Burns.

She is married to Peter; they have two grown up children.

Hood was to have been succeeded as Moderator by Angus Morrison. On 18 March 2014 the Church of Scotland announced that Morrison had withdrawn his nomination on grounds of ill health. On 2 April it was announced that she was to be succeeded by John Chalmers, the Principal Clerk to the General Assembly.