ENG-1970 — Page 259

RELIGION AND CUSTOM

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installed on October 26, 1969, the first Chinese Bishop of the 130- year old Roman Catholic Church in Hong Kong.

Health, education and diversified social service work has been extended and developed during the past year as the people's needs required.

In the field of education, expansion continued and there are at present 259 Catholic primary and secondary schools with an aggre- gate enrolment of 224,151 students.

Social services include eight vocational centres, six social centres, 11 hostels for students and working persons; six hospitals, two maternity homes, 22 general clinics, six dental clinics, three mobile clinics; four residential nurseries for children and 17 day nurseries; two homes for the aged and two for the blind and three training centres for the disabled.

In their Christian social commitment, the Catholic clergy and laity have during the past year increasingly engaged in joint activi- ties related to contemporary conditions in Hong Kong with the other Christian groups with whom they share an awareness of re- sponsibility to their fellow men.

Today, church personnel engaged in pastoral, educational and welfare work in Hong Kong include 342 priests, 117 religious brothers and 818 religious sisters, 38 religious orders and congregations rep- resenting 38 nationalities.

Catholics as in September 1970 number 247,953, over 90 per cent of them Chinese, spread out in 29 parishes on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and in 15 rural districts of the New Territories.

Hong Kong's Jewish community worship at a synagogue in Robin- son Road constructed in 1901 on land given by Mr Joseph Sassoon and his family. Mr Sassoon built the synagogue in memory of his mother Leah and it is known as the Synagogue ‘Ohel Leah'. The Jewish Recreation Club and the resident rabbi's apartments are on the same site. There are about 500 people in the congregation and they belong to families who originally came from the United King- dom, China, India, Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, South Africa and Israel.