Cardinal Woelki remains in office: Everything should stay the same

For the majority of Catholics, the Pope’s decision to allow Cardinal Woelki to remain in office is a bitter disappointment. The message from Rome means that everything should stay the same and that reforms are undesirable.

Somehow it was already foreseeable. In June Pope Francis rejected the resignation offer of the Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx, last week that of the Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Heße, and now we learn that the Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki can also remain in office.

The message from Rome is therefore unmistakable: everything should stay the same. In other words, changes are undesirable, and so are reforms. Even if, as here in Germany, they have been longed for and in some cases prepared.

A disappointment for many

For the majority of the local Catholics, this is a bitter disappointment. Because with the current decision from Rome, the next stage of the Synodal Path, which is scheduled for the coming week in Frankfurt, is likely to lose a lot of tension and hope. So the motivation to continue advocating reforms in the church has gotten a painful damper. Pity!

However, if you do not want any changes in leadership, you must also be prepared to swallow the corresponding consequences in another area: when you leave the church. Because after the decisions of the Pope in matters of archbishops in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne, the already bad image of the Catholic Church is likely to get additional scratches and the number of committed church visitors will continue to decline.

At the end there are two questions. First: How does Cardinal Woelki intend to put the broken porcelain of the last few months back together in Cologne? Second: What do the German bishops want to counteract the disappointment over the lack of reforms?