The Bishop of Hong Kong is the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, and responsible for looking after its spiritual and administrative needs. The Diocese of Hong Kong is nominally part of the ecclesiastical province of Canton and thus is a suffragan of that archdiocese. However, it has been exempt in practice since 1951, when the People's Republic of China severed diplomatic relations with the Holy See. As a crown colony of the United Kingdom at the time, Hong Kong was unaffected by this and relations with the Vatican continued unabated. Consequently, the bishop of Hong Kong answers "directly to the Holy See". The current bishop is John Tong Hon (pictured), who served as the diocese's thirteenth ordinary from 2009 until 2017, and is presently its apostolic administrator following the death of his successor, Michael Yeung, in 2019. Eight men have been Bishop of Hong Kong; another six were heads of its antecedent jurisdictions. Three bishops – John Baptist Wu, Joseph Zen, and John Tong Hon – were elevated to the College of Cardinals. (Full list...)