BELFAST – The Rev. Ann Kidder of Southwest Harbor, is serving as interim priest at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Court and Elm streets.

She will serve the Belfast congregation while it searches for a new rector to replace the Rev. Kent Tarpley, who left this summer for a Virginia parish after 11 years at St. Margaret’s.

The youngest of six children, Kidder was raised in Vermont. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1977 from the University of New Hampshire Durham, where she graduated in 1977.

While a student, she excavated prehistoric archaeological sites and studied the Shaker Community in Canterbury, N.H.

In the 1980s, she lived in Peru, where she studied Spanish and visited the Machu Picchu ruins.

She graduated from General Theological Seminary in 1993, where she earned her master’s degree in divinity. Kidder wrote her honors thesis on Quaker and Ignatian approaches to spiritual discernment.

She previously served as rector of St. Andrew-by-the-Lake in Seal Cove and St. John the Divine in Southwest Harbor. Under the rules governing the diocese, Kidder will not be a candidate for the full-time rector’s job at St. Margaret’s.

She also offers spiritual direction to clients in Bangor and Bar Harbor and is an adjunct faculty member at Bangor Theological Seminary.

Kidder and her husband, Ted Fletcher, a lawyer, have two children.

For more information, call 338-2412 or visit www.stmargaretsbelfast.com.