THE secret wealth of Hong Kong's Anglican Church, believed to stand at far in excess of $1 billion, may finally come to light under the plan by the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau to set up an independent province this year.
It will be the first step towards making the highly secretive Bishop of Victoria Fund transparent after years of harsh criticism from church members of a lack of accountability.
Repeated requests by members of the local diocese for the incumbent Bishop, the Right Reverend Peter Kwong Kong-kit, to reveal details of the mammoth fund have been ignored.
Some church members have criticised the lack of transparency and raised concerns about how the fund is managed, invested and deployed.
Only a handful of staff in the bishop's office have knowledge of the fund, set up in the 1960s, while the rest of the diocese's clerics and parishioners are left in the dark, according to some senior church members.
'Even synod members, be they clerics or laymen, have no knowledge about the Bishop of Victoria Fund,' said a synod member.
The fund, swelled by cash donations and earnings from properties granted by the Government to the diocese on privileged terms, is designated to be spent training clergymen and on the diocese's development work, among other uses.
