Pope Francis apparently leaves the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, in office, but he should take a break of several months. Report that Time online and the world. The Vatican will officially announce the decision on Friday afternoon. It was initially unclear whether the break was at Woelki’s own request or whether it was ordered by the Pope.
For some time now, Cardinal Woelki has been criticized for his handling of the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. At the end of 2018, he initially commissioned a report on how those responsible in the Archdiocese of Cologne dealt with cases of abuse, but then did not publish it. Woelki cited legal problems and methodological deficiencies as reasons for this. Woelki had this decision approved by the Cologne Advisory Board, which was not aware of the report. The spokesperson for the Advisory Board then left the committee in protest. Woelki’s approach triggered an unprecedented crisis of confidence in the Archdiocese of Cologne.
In a second report commissioned and published by Woelki, the cardinal himself was exonerated of misconduct. The former Cologne Personnel Officer and Vicar General, Stefan Heße, who is now Archbishop of Hamburg, was charged with eleven breaches of duty. Heße then offered Pope Francis the resignation from the office of Archbishop, Francis refused this resignation last week. Other clergymen who were accused of breaches of duty in the report, such as the Cologne auxiliary bishop Ansgar Puff, were given leave of absence. Dominikus Schwaderlapp, today Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Cologne and Vicar General under the former Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner, had been released from his duties by Woelki.
Because of the crisis of confidence, Pope Francis sent two Apostolic Visitators to Cologne in June to investigate the situation in the Archdiocese and report to him.
Many Catholics for Woelkis to be recalled
In a survey, 39 percent of all respondents and 61 percent of the Catholics questioned answered yes to the question of whether Pope Franziskus Woelki should recall. The polling institute INSA carried out the representative survey on behalf of Bild newspaper carried out.
The decision from Rome will be made shortly after the autumn plenary assembly of the German Catholic bishops in Fulda. These had discussed, among other things, the reform process of the Synodal Way. Another topic was the further processing of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Archbishop Stefan Heße had offered “all support” to the chairman of the Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, after the Pope’s decision.