The Rev. Johnathan Denson is the Convocation’s inaugural Ministry Fellow, a two-year fellowship position for a priest who is new to ministry in the Episcopal Church. The newly established position provides an opportunity for a priest to be further formed for ordained ministry in the unique setting of the Convocation churches across Europe.
Denson is currently working as an assisting priest at the American Cathedral in Paris while Canon Hailey Jacobsen goes on maternity leave. “I am excited about the opportunities that this fellowship will bring me, both Paris—a place where I still feel very new and have much to learn—and elsewhere in the Convocation,” Denson said. “I’m particularly looking forward to transitioning into a more pastoral chapter of my priesthood, having spent nearly all of the eight years since my ordination in academic and administrative roles.”
Prior to this appointment, Denson served as theologian-in-residence at the Anglican Centre in Rome (the ambassadorial office representing the worldwide Anglican Communion to the Holy See) and as assisting priest at Saint Paul’s Within the Walls (Rome). Before that, he served for several years as master of liturgical ceremonies at the seat of the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy in Rome, during which time he assisted the pope at numerous liturgies, and worked with various Catholic parish ministries in the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria.
“Ecumenism has been a life-long reality for me,” Denson said. “I grew up as the only Catholic in my school in an overwhelming Evangelical region of the southeastern United States and my mother’s family included a number of Episcopal and Methodist clergy and lay leaders.”
At 14, Denson said he felt a call to ordained ministry and chose to attend a Benedictine boarding school, later joining the Benedictine order. He was ordained to the diaconate in 2017 and to the priesthood in 2018. In early 2023, he began the process of being received into the clergy of the Episcopal Church and was formally admitted to exercise the office of priest by Edington in May 2025. His education includes studies for ordination at the Pontifical University of Sant’Anselmo, where he later specialized in the history of doctrinal theology, in which field he is currently completing his doctoral dissertation. Denson is also keenly interested in theological aesthetics and has done graduate studies in literature and art at the University of Oxford and spent a year as a Gastdoktorand with the Institut für Systematische Theologie und Ethik at the University of Vienna.
The ministry fellow will be assigned by the bishop to serve in congregations of the Convocation to gain experiences that will further their formation for the life and work of parish ministry. Selection for the fellowship is based on demonstrated preparation to serve in sacramental, liturgical, and pastoral roles in parish ministry.
For more information, please contact:
Audrey Shankles
Canon for Programming & Communications
ashankles@episcopaleurope.org