Fortunately for it, the Anglican Church not only allows its priests to get married and still be involved in the ministry; it also allows them to continue with their professional jobs and careers even after they are ordained priests.

It came as a surprise to many people to find out, on Friday evening, that the Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings, Stephen Green, is an ordained Anglican priest who on Sundays still performs his ministerial duties – baptisms, weddings and even funerals – at his local church.

At a presentation of his latest book, Good value: reflections on money, morality and an uncertain world, held at The Palace in Valletta in the presence of President George Abela, one could see that this unlikely combination had many people fascinated.

This is not the first book Mr Green wrote. He said he decided to write this book in April 2008 when he was at a bankers’ conference at Lago di Como. Already then, the clouds were gathering, there was a storm coming, and a sense of foreboding could be felt across the world. We now know what came later: the world crisis unleashed by banking mistakes leading to a worldwide recession.

In his book, Mr Green speaks highly of globalisation, without letting it become an ideology for him. Over the past years, before the crisis, hundreds of millions of people raised themselves out of poverty and all the disruption that poverty brings with it.

But the current crisis stopped all this, one hopes temporarily. Mr Green ascribed the crisis to three causes:

the rise of producer nations that accumulated huge surpluses, especially in Asia;

countries like the US, the UK and Spain where growth was not accompanied by corresponding growth in productivity; and

parts of the banking system ventured into systems that undermined the whole system.

Replying to a question by Professor Emmanuel Agius, Mr Green defended speculation: not all speculation is bad, only that which is destructive is negative. Yet as an Anglican priest he does not feel he is called to glorify poverty, nor must he idolize riches: the young man of the Gospel reminds him of so many young whiz-kids in the City of London who unknowingly have sold their soul to the god money.

But even after this recession, globalisation will resume its onward march: micro-credit schemes for instance have helped incredibly in giving the poor the first leg up on the ladder of growth in places like South Africa and Brazil, especially women entrepreneurs. Mobile telephony and digitalisation help too in continents like Africa. We may think this is a continent lost to economic growth, but things are moving there as well. In Mozambique, for instance, where the average wage is $200 there has been a 10 per cent growth per annum, while the population increased by three per cent. Thus every 10 years the average income doubles.

Still, there is much to do: the GDP of Africa was one-ninth of that of the advanced world in 1990 but had slipped back to one-twentieth 10 years later. One must however remember that South Korea in 1960 had the same average income as the Congo, but look at the difference between them today.

For all his being an Anglican priest, he is not the only committed Christian in the top levels of international finance. The CEO of Barclays Bank is a committed Catholic, as is the CEO of HSBC.

At the end of the presentation, the distinguished audience adjourned to the Tapestry Chamber where Joseph Calleja and Maria Abela, the President’s daughter, gave a recital. At the end, Mr Calleja presented a bouquet of flowers to Mrs Abela, to mark her birthday.