Clergy at Trinity
Interim Rector
Following the retirement of our previous rector, Fr. Kirtley began serving as interim rector of Trinity Parish (Trinity and Old Swedes) in May 2025. He is passionate about congregational life and finds joy in partnering with congregations discerning new and creative ways of exercising mission and serving their surrounding communities. For over the last sixteen years, Fr. Kirtley has served parishes in several dioceses as an intentional interim rector or priest–in–charge, consultant in congregational leadership development, mission planning, mutual ministry valuations and / or clergy search processes. He brings experience in organizational development, especially intentional navigation of challenging circumstances and ‘bridge–building’ during times of leadership transitions. Fr. Kirtley is certified in appreciative inquiry, transitional ministry, and clergy coaching.
Fr. Kirtley is a bi–vocational Priest and Physician. He prepared for ordination at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. He trained in Pathology, specializing in Breast & Gynecologic, Perinatal & Pediatric and Forensic Pathology, and studied health administration and policy. Before being Called to Trinity Old Swedes, he served as Vicar (Part–Time) of Christ Episcopal Church, Lucketts in Leesburg, Virginia while also exercising ministry as a physician healthcare executive in Maryland. Prior to the pandemic, Fr. Kirtley served as a Spiritual Health Clinician at Emory University Hospital Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia, and taught liturgy at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is a certified teacher of Cognitively–Based Compassion Training (CBCT®), a system of contemplative exercises designed to strengthen and sustain compassion, through the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion–Based Ethics at Emory University. He is a peer reviewer for the spirituality section of the Association of American Medical Colleges’ journal Academic Medicine.
Fr Kirtley is nourished by monastic prayer disciplines following Benedictine rule of life as a vowed member of the Society of the Resurrection (SR), Mirfield, United Kingdom. He seeks to offer generous hospitality – ‘All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed like Christ’ (RB 53:1).
Pastoral Associate
The Rev. Dr. Marta Illueca is a native New Yorker with a bi-vocational spin to her ministries within the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware. A high school graduate from Marymount School of New York, Marta obtained a medical degree with honors from the University of Panamá’s School of Medicine and specialized in Pediatric Gastroenterology at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York, where she joined their faculty until 2003. She then worked for the pharmaceutical industry in Delaware until 2014. Marta is a graduate from Berkeley Divinity School, the Episcopal Seminary at Yale University and was ordained to the priesthood in 2019. By supplementing her theological training with a degree in Pain Medicine from Tufts Medical School, she is developing innovative programs for physicians and clergy on the spiritual dimensions of healing. Marta is the Clergy Medical Liaison for the Episcopal Church in Delaware and the leader of the diocesan Pain and Prayer Project. She is the co-creator of a scientifically validated Pain-Related PRAYER Scale (PPRAYERS) in collaboration with major academic centers and the lead for the diocesan Pain and Prayer Project. An active, bilingual medical educator, her work is expanding into the Hispanic/Latino space in the U.S. and Latin America. Rev. Marta’s ministry focus at Trinity Episcopal Church is serving the Hispanic/Latino community, a vibrant yet peaceful and apolitical international congregation. Marta began her ministry at Trinity Parish in February 2023 and shares her time between pastoral work at Trinity and academic research on spirituality and health.
Contact the Rev. Dr. Marta Illueca
Priest Associate
A native of Wales, Fr. David came to the United States in 1965. He attended New York University, where he earned a BA in Politics. A cradle Anglican, he joined a parish in Manhattan and in 1969 entered the General Theological Seminary. Graduating in 1972, he served as Assistant Minister at Grace Church in New York and as a chaplain at NYU.
On the evangelical side of the Church in his youth, ten years in Greenwich Village was followed by service in congregations in the Hudson Valley, where he encountered the communities of St. Helena’s Convent and Holy Cross Monastery. This broadened his spiritual perspective. There he also met and married his wife Kathleen, who was a nurse at a local hospital. He also became involved in ministry with migrant farm workers, which continued when they moved to the Diocese of Newark in 1987, now accompanied by three children.
He was a founding member and chair of the Episcopal Migrant Farmworker Committee which linked ministries across the Church. He also served on the pastoral care teams of hospitals in the communities where they lived. In 2001, they moved to Long Island where he served a larger parish and was also appointed regional Dean. As retirement approached, he trained for interim ministry and, moving north, served for five years in congregations in the Diocese of Vermont.
The Davids moved to Delaware in 2018 to be nearer to their grandchildren and searched for a congregation to call home. This was interrupted by COVID, but after some pleasant sojourns in other parishes, they found that Trinity-Old Swedes in Wilmington to be the match for which they had been seeking.
Fr. David enjoys filling in for services in English and Spanish and also helping at the altar when needed.