The global financial crisis has affected the Russian Orthodox Church, which, like the State, is curtailing programmes and preparing for the possibility of further cutbacks.

Hungarian church leaders have warned that their country faces violence and breakdown in the face of unemployment and dislocation brought by the current financial meltdown.

In a lecture at the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has argued that a change of heart as well as structural reform is needed to address the global economic crisis.

The current financial crisis could signal the end of over-dependence on a selfish kind of capitalism, the spiritual head of the Catholic church in England and Wales has said in a newspaper interview.