Anglican Leader
Warns Conservatives Who Split With Church

The head of the Anglican Church of Canada has warned members who split with the church over its decision to bless same-sex unions that they will lose their church buildings and funds.

''In our Anglican tradition, individuals who choose to leave the Church over contentious issues cannot take property and other assets with them,'' Archbishop Fred Hiltz said in a letter released Friday.

The letter comes two days after St. John's Shaughnessy, a large parish church in Vancouver, voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and affiliate itself with a South American Anglican church, which has a more conservative stance on homosexuality.

St. John's is one of the first Canadian Anglican churches to vote to split since South America's Province of the Southern Cone said in November it would accept Canadian churches who are at odds with their more liberal bishops or national church.

The issues of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex marriages has divided members of the 700-year-old Anglican Church around the world.

In June over 700 Anglican bishops from around the world voted 9-1 against the blessing of same-sex unions at the decennial Lambeth Conference, held in Winnipeg, Canada.

In the United States, clergy and lay members of the diocese of San Joaquin in California became the first full diocese to break from the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican family when they voted to secede December 6. (Charmaine Noronha, AP)