ANGLICANS across the Central West including Bathurst, Mudgee and Orange will surely be praying for pennies from Heaven after being saddled with what is emerging as a crippling debt and an uncertain future.

Church properties including leading Central Western schools have been brought into sharp focus following a ruling in the Supreme Court last week that the Diocese of Bathurst is responsible for the $14 million balance of a $40 million debt to the Commonwealth Bank.

The Bathurst Diocese embraces parishes of Orange, Mudgee, Blayney, Cowra, Grenfell, Molong, and Rylstone-Kandos among others.

All are now in damage control while church leaders consider their options.

(The Lithgow and Portland Anglican parishes come under the Sydney Diocese and are in no way affected by the crisis.)

The Central Western Daily reported at the weekend that 34 parishes across the diocese have been desperately fundraising for the past three years in an effort to repay the debt and stave off court action by the bank.

Some properties, including two schools, were sold off in 2013 to claw back some of the debt.

In a 129 page ruling last week Justice Hammerschlag said the two schools — at Dubbo and Orange — had been incapable of paying back their debts and the Anglican Development Fund was ‘virtually collapsing’.

As a result of the judgment the Western Advocate reported that even the prestigious All Saints College in Bathurst may have to be sold.

The Advocate said the church’s problems began when the Anglican Development Fund, a corporation under the auspices of the diocese, borrowed $40 million from the bank which in then ‘on lent’ in particular to help start up the

Macquarie (Dubbo) and Orange Anglican Grammar Schools, both of which have now been sold without clearing the debt.

The court ruling has now raised the prospect of the 140-year-old All Saints College also meeting a privatisation fate.

At the time of loan the only security held by the bank was a so called ‘letter of comfort’ signed by the then Bishop of Bathurst Richard Hurford in 2008 undertaking responsibility on behalf of the diocese.