When the former auxiliary bishop Rainer Maria Woelki returned to Cologne as archbishop almost exactly eight years ago after a short guest appearance in Berlin, he was considered a good choice by many clergymen who had seen him as a faithful Eckart of the Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner.
According to his companions at the time, Woelki had stepped out of the shadow of his mentor in Berlin, become a freer man and open to good advice.
In the meantime, the expectations that were attached to the election by the cathedral chapter are in ruins.
Worse still: Although Meisner may have been a despot (the “Brothers in the Mist” only appeared after his death), he was always available to his priests and quite reliable in his manners.
The consequential damage is increasing day by day
Today, the relationship between the clergy and the cardinal is so shattered that some wish for a return to the Meisner years.
Because half a year after returning from the "time out" to which Pope Woelki had been entrusted, the suspicion has become a certainty that nothing has changed.
The "moral bankruptcy" that three city deans are talking about has long since happened.
The consequential damage is increasing day by day.
But Francis stalls everyone as if the implosion of one of the largest and most important dioceses in the world was nothing more than bird shit on his pristine white cassock.