A good two months have passed since almost all city and district deans of the Archdiocese of Cologne wrote an incendiary letter to Rome.

The clergy, who had become accustomed to many things under Joachim Cardinal Meisner in more than two decades, broke with everything they had promised in terms of obedience and achieved in terms of accommodation.

With the pews becoming ever emptier and more and more faces of Catholics in front of their eyes, some of whom have turned their backs on their church after decades, they spoke of a “hardly recoverable loss of credibility and authority” with regard to Meisner’s successor Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki.

The fire letter made just as little impression on the pope as on Woelki himself. Francis would rather save mother earth than his church, the Cologne cardinal imagines himself to be a victim of sinister reform powers who want to get rid of him because of his opposition to the synodal path.

Many who beat the rhythm of the church reform project should not shed a tear after Woelki.

Disputes based on respect for minority opinions are just as unacceptable today as they were in the days of theological terror of opinion carried out with all disciplinary means under John Paul II. But synodal path or not, Woelki is not a victim.

In Cologne it is becoming increasingly clear how many balance sheets – personal and financial – he left traces of the devastation.

On his very own path.