welfare agencies.

Arguably, the church is more present in our lives than ever before.

It is a massive decentralised network of 3000 organisations, from the Jesuits to the Sisters of Mercy.

Its elaborate, labyrinthine structure has been built up over centuries. Hundreds of religious orders have their own traditions and structure, drawing authority often directly from Rome.

It has its own banks, superannuation fund, insurance company, university, news service and telecommunications provider. It’s like a parallel state with its own vertically integrated economy.

The church itself says it has a 220,000-strong workforce, as big as the country’s largest private sector employer (Wesfarmers), and almost the size of the Commonwealth.

John Ellis was abused by a priest when he was an altar boy in the 1970s. Credit:Louise Kennerley

The secret state

Yet, in a 2007 judgment, theFund.

The fund in Melbourne alone has more than $1 billion in assets. It takes deposits and lends money to parishes, schools and other church-related activities, at interest, and last year made a profit of $26.5 million. The Sydney equivalent is similar with just shy of $1 billion in assets.

Yet the bank is exempted from oversight by the national financial industry regulator, and it pays no tax - just one of many church agencies and businesses beyond the purview of government watchdogs and the tax office.

Where it has come under official pressure to open its books, the church has resisted.

In 2013, during the closing days of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations, the committee requested - on notice to Archbishop