No, this time Pope Francis has not even given up appearances that he is adhering to canon law when deciding on the future of Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki of Cologne.
However, his case is different from that of Hamburg's Archbishop Stefan Heße, who - in contrast to Woelki - had offered the Pope his resignation.
The Archbishop of Cologne did not commit any breaches of duty in punishing sexual abuse.
Rather, it was Woelki himself who, after his return from Berlin to the Rhine, set in motion the dynamic of enlightenment that threatened to bring the machinations of Hesse and others to light.
It was their right that they tried to use legal means to put Woelki in his place.
His cardinal mistake was that the Archbishop listened to these whisperings and did not shrink back from duping the Advisory Board.
None of this has remained hidden, not even from the Pope: Francis himself speaks of a "crisis of confidence that upsets many believers".
You have to be an incorrigible optimist to hope that this crisis, which has long gripped large parts of the Cologne clergy, can be overcome with a “spiritual break” lasting several months.
Because it not only leaves many of those affected “perplexed and injured”, as the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Limburg Bishop Bätzing, soberly states.
It looks more like that “trust in the leadership of the episcopal office” (Bätzing) has been irretrievably lost far beyond Hamburg and Cologne.
Confidence in the integrity of the Bishop of Rome included.