When the pope puts the biretta on a new cardinal, he explains to him why this hat is red.

The color is a sign of willingness to act with courage, even to the point of shedding one's own blood, for the growth of the Christian faith, the peace and tranquility of God's people, and the liberty of the Holy Roman Church.

One would like to believe that a cardinal who is Archbishop of Cologne would not need the special status-related self-assurance when looking in the dressing-room mirror.

Because in the Cologne church the concentration of traces is particularly great that the testimony of one's own blood is the original source of strength of the Christian faith.

One of the patrons of Cologne is Saint Gereon, a Roman officer who, according to tradition, was followed by 318 comrades and fellow believers to death.

In the interest of the church's self-enlightenment, criticism of legends may delete one or two followers, but realistic hagiography faithful to the church will never add the figures of advisors whom Gereon might have consulted before his decision to martyrdom, in view of the expected tone of the obituaries in the legionary press.

Nobody had to recommend him how he could demonstrate "credibility and authenticity".

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki spent a lot of money on such advice, and now the Cologne city dean Robert Kleine, the guardian of the treasure of the martyr's relics, so to speak, has asked him to explain that he had not followed the advice.

On four A4 pages, the paper by a PR company published by the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” in 2020 explains how Cardinal Woelki could “survive” – and that’s the wrong cardinal from the start Question.

On Twitter, an anonymous legionnaire Woelkis commented on Monsignor Kleine's intervention: "It's time to draw up Sullan proscription lists with these unfaithful servants." , under Sulla 520 people were eliminated in this way.

In Augustine's "The City of God", Sulla's proscriptions epitomize the self-destruction of the Roman Republic in contrast to the peace policy of the Christian emperors.

Augustine reports that the dictator had to be persuaded to let citizens live at all "so that there would be someone over whom the victors could exercise their rule".

So Woelkis Sullans should fear that they would soon be without believers.