What is the central message that Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki of Cologne has to address to the Catholics in his archdiocese on his return after a five-month "sabbatical"?

If you take the archdiocese's press release from Wednesday at its word, then in addition to the resignation initially rejected by the Pope, this is above all gratitude: The cardinal wants to thank "for the supportive prayer, the great encouragement and the many encouraging letters, emails and postcards from all those believers thank those who have reached him in the past few months from the Archdiocese of Cologne and from large parts of Germany and from abroad,” it says.

Thomas Jansen

Editor in Politics.

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The cardinal would also like to thank everyone who has borne and assumed responsibility in the archdiocese over the past few weeks and months, above all the Apostolic Administrator, Auxiliary Bishop Rolf Steinhäuser.

The relationship with the diocesan council, which stopped working with Woelki in January last year, is unlikely to improve.

"Instead of apologizing for the thousands of people who have left the church, we would first like to say thank you," the chairman of the diocesan council in the archdiocese, Solingen's mayor Tim Kurzbach, told the FAZ

"Misconduct by those responsible overall"

In Woelki's pastoral letter, with which he addressed the Catholics in the archdiocese on Wednesday, thanks are the top priority, but the word leaving the church is not mentioned.

In the letter, the returned Archbishop tries to convey the impression that his time off should primarily serve his physical and mental convalescence.

"In fact, last October I reached a level of physical and mental exhaustion that made it necessary to take a break," the reader learns.

The 65-year-old archbishop is asking for understanding: "There will be quite a few of you who know about the need for such a time because you yourself or people close to you have already experienced such a long-term overload".

It was a time for him to "allow my own exhaustion and regain my strength".

However, anyone who had hoped for an admission of guilt that did not just remain in the abstract was disappointed.

He is sorry "that this time is such a stressful time for many people in our church," he writes.

It pains him that "I too am responsible for this situation".

He had time to "confront the omissions, the mistakes and the guilt in my life and to see and appreciate the successes and the encouragement - and to learn from both," the Cologne cardinal continues.

He knows about the insufficient handling of sexual abuse, "about the misconduct of those responsible overall and about irritations in the church in Germany and the world church", but also about "the communication and proclamation of faith that needs reform".

Woelki does not speak of personal guilt, but of "personal hostility" towards him.

During the time-out, he said, "a lot of things started to move that had hardened in me in an uncomfortable way due to the increasingly tense situation in the church and the increasing, often very personal hostilities against me".

However, whether and what he specifically wants to do differently in the future remains vague: This concerns “connections between participation and leadership, possibilities for pastoral development and necessary reforms in the church through to systemic changes that affect the realities of sexual, spiritual and Structural abuse also give me up,” explains Woelki.

The explanation of the offer to resign from office is characteristic of his apparently unchanged view of the disastrous situation in the archdiocese and his own part in it.

The Archbishop of Cologne goes into great lengths about this in his pastoral letter: The fundamental thing for him during his retreat and his time off was “the constant practice of the Ignatian attitude of indifference”, reports the Cologne cardinal.

This refers to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order and author of a manual on spiritual exercises.

Apparently, Woelki was guided by that.

This attitude consists, as on the day of his ordination, in "completely and unreservedly surrendering oneself to Christ, the Lord of the Church," said the Cologne cardinal.

It is about "not wanting anything too much", but giving everything, really everything, freely to God".

After this preface, in which Woelki does not once mention his work as archbishop of Cologne, comes the sentence that sounds like an archbishop’s act of mercy towards the pope: As an expression of “this attitude of inner freedom”, Woelki writes, he has the pope made his office as archbishop of Cologne available, "so that he too is free to decide what serves the good of the church of Cologne the most".

Woelki asks the Catholics in the archdiocese to give him the chance for a fresh start.

He asks for "openness, your patience, that you give me, no, give us another chance".

At the end of his letter, Woelki asks the faithful to “share” a prayer with him.

It is the Liturgy of the Hours of the Benedictine Sisters of Dinklage.

Woelki added a stanza to it: The second line reads: "In your mercy: my failure".

But Woelki also leaves this open: who should pray for whom here.