Australian taxpayers are coughing up millions of dollars to fund restoration works at the headquarters of a church that has faced public criticism for purchasing a harbour-side Sydney property.
The Albanese government is gifting $25 million of taxpayers’ money to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia for “restoration works” of the church’s archdiocesan site at Redfern in New South Wales.
In 2020, the media reported concerns raised by members of the Greek Orthodox community after the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia Consolidated Trust – a ‘Basic Religious Charity’ with charitable status for ‘advancing religion’ – purchased a $6.5 million apartment as an official residence for the church’s new leader Archbishop Makarios.
According to reports at the time, the three-bedroom apartment had “iconic views of Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Barangaroo, Darling Harbour and the City Skyline.” Plus, a further $3 million was reportedly spent on renovating the apartment.
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese came under further media scrutiny in 2021 when, according to an ABC investigation, taxpayer-funded aged-care homes funnelled $31 million back into the coffers of the church over eight years, with one facility said to have paid double the market rate in rent to the church.
The recent federal budget papers detailed that the federal government is providing $12.9 million for the restoration project at the Redfern site in the 2026/27 financial year.
The restoration project is just another example of taxpayer largesse being provided to religious organisations.
In the lead-up to the 2025 federal election, the Albanese government committed $60 million to the “renewal” of the Catholic Church’s St Patrick’s Cathedral precinct in Melbourne, stating that the project would “honour the contribution that people from many countries have made to their faith and to the city more broadly.”
A media investigation in 2018 revealed that the Catholic Church in Victoria held property and other assets worth more than $9 billion, while the figure reached more than $30 billion nationally.
Meanwhile, the Albanese government has committed just $500,000 of an estimated $1.5 million needed for the development of a memorial in Ballarat for survivors of sexual assault and abuse.
The Catholic Church has devastated many lives and families in the Victorian city, which was an epicentre for child sexual abuse by members of the clergy. The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse described the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat’s handling of clergy child sex abuse as a “catastrophic failure of leadership”.
Last year, the Rationalist Society of Australia warned the federal government and New South Wales government against a repeat of the World Youth Day controversy, urging them not to fund an upcoming Catholic event.
In 2008, the federal and state governments paid a combined $184 million to support the Catholic Church in hosting World Youth Day in Sydney, sparking a public backlash about the use of taxpayers’ money for a religious event.
In 2028, the Pope Leo XIV will travel to Sydney for the Catholic Church’s International Eucharistic Congress.
In 2024, the Rationalist Society of Australia revealed that Australian taxpayers paid $100,000 to ferry Pope Francis – the head of a city-state – around another country for the Pope’s own missionary activities.
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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.
Image: Melissa Walker Horn (Unsplash)