The Foreign Office has announced the appointment of His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Holy See. Ms Tarandip Kaur Sandhu MBE – known as Tammy – will succeed the incumbent in the post, Chris Trott CVO, who has served the United Kingdom at the Vatican since 2021.

Ms Sandhu studied at University College London before joining the Foreign Office in 2005 and has since held a series of diplomatic, trade and communications roles in London, Rabat, Brussels and Chennai. She previously served as deputy head of mission in Chennai and deputy spokesperson at the UK Representation to the EU in Brussels.

More recently, she served as deputy consul general and then consul general in San Francisco, leading UK engagement across California and the Pacific North West, while also chairing the Foreign Office’s Race and Ethnicity Network, for which she was awarded an MBE in 2021. She will be expected to present her credentials later this year as Chris Trott returns to the UK.

Chris Trott’s ongoing service as His Majesty’s ambassador to the Holy See has topped a diplomatic career of more than three decades with postings in Japan, Burma, Afghanistan, South Africa and the South Pacific, as well as ambassadorships to Senegal and South Sudan. A career diplomat since joining the Foreign Office in 1991, he has brought to Rome extensive experience of conflict resolution, development and humanitarian diplomacy, particularly from fragile and post-conflict states.

During his tenure at the Vatican, Trott repeatedly stressed that the Holy See occupied a distinctive place in international affairs: not simply as another sovereign state, but as the centre of a global religious and humanitarian network. He described his role as involving engagement not only with the Vatican hierarchy and Secretariat of State, but with the wider Catholic world of charities, Religious orders and international agencies headquartered in Rome. In interviews, he pointed in particular to the Church’s ability to operate “directly with situations on the ground in a way that governments can’t”, citing organisations such as Caritas and the Church’s work in areas affected by war and poverty.

His ambassadorship coincided with a significant period in Anglo-Vatican relations, encompassing both the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. Trott described the Vatican’s response to the late Queen’s death as evidence of the “warmth” of relations between London and the Holy See since the restoration of full diplomatic ties in 1982. He also highlighted Pope Francis’s coronation gift to the King – a fragment of the True Cross incorporated into the Cross of Wales – as an “extraordinarily symbolic gesture”, particularly because it would be shared between Catholics and Anglicans in Wales. More recently, the King sent Pope Leo XIV a congratulatory message on the first anniversary of his pontificate.

Reflecting on more than 32 years in the Diplomatic Service, Ambassador Trott remarked in a 2023 interview with the Catholic Herald that he had “hardly ever got up in the morning and not wanted to go to work”, describing public service as both a privilege and an opportunity to do work he believed mattered deeply for his country.

Trott said on X/Twitter he was “delighted” to share the news of his successor’s appointment and said he wished Ms Sandhu “every success”.