The Bishop of Hong Kong is the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, who is 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 Stephen Chow.