Church of England gives £600,000 to bail out Lambeth Conference
By George Conger, CEN
The Church of England has given the Lambeth Conference an emergency loan of £600,000 to cover the estimated £1.2 million shortfall for the July 16 to Aug 3 conference.
On Aug 11, the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners met with the officers of the Lambeth Conference Company, a corporation set up by the Anglican Consultative Council and Lambeth Palace to manage the conference, to address the cash shortfall.
The Lambeth Conference Company’s officers, who include ACC Secretary General Kenneth Kearon and Lambeth Chief of Staff Chris Smith reported that they were unable to meet the conference’s financial obligations. The Board and the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, which met on Aug 7, agreed to extend a temporary interest free loan to the Lambeth Conference while it attempted to raise money to cover the shortfall.
According to a January 2008 internal conference document distributed to the bishops who had registered, the budget for the Lambeth Conference was £4.4 million and the Lambeth Spouses’ Conference was £1.2 million, excluding the costs of travel to the conference.
Conference spokesman Archbishop Phillip Aspinall told the media that a final accounting would not be available until after the conference closed its books in mid-August, but a member of the conference organizing team told The Church of England Newspaper the deficit could rise to £2 million. In contrast, the 1998 conference ended with a budget surplus of over £1 million.
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