(updates pars 2-3, adds last 2 pars)
Pope Francis has decided to leave in office a prominent German archbishop who has faced criticism for his handling of the church's sexual abuse scandal, but the cleric has decided to take time out, his archdiocese said.
The Pope "is counting on" the archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, the Vatican said in a statement. "But at the same time it is clear that the archbishop and the archdiocese need a time for a pause, renewal and reconciliation."
That prompted Francis to grant Mr Woelki's request for a break from mid-October to the beginning of March.
The aim is "to be able to think and to open space for confidence to grow again", the statement added.
Mr Woelki has become a deeply divisive figure in the German church.
A report commissioned by the archbishop and issued in March found 75 cases in which eight high-ranking officials - including his late predecessor - neglected their duties to either follow up on, report or sanction cases of alleged abuse by clergy and lay church employees, and failed to take care of victims.
Hamburg Archbishop Stefan Hesse, previously a senior church official in Cologne, was faulted for 11 cases of neglecting his duty. He offered his resignation to Francis, who eventually rejected it last week.
The report absolved Mr Woelki of any neglect of his legal duty with respect to abuse victims. He subsequently said he made mistakes in past cases involving sexual abuse allegations, but made clear he had no intention of resigning.
He infuriated many Catholics by citing legal concerns to keep under wraps a first report on how local church officials reacted when priests were accused of sexual abuse.
He commissioned the new report - an 800-page investigation based on church files and put together by a German law firm.
A pair of papal envoys were dispatched to Cologne in June to investigate possible mistakes by senior church officials in handling past sexual abuse cases and the "complex pastoral situation" in the church there.
During Mr Woelki's absence, auxiliary bishop Rolf Steinhaeuser will run the archdiocese as an "apostolic administrator".
The head of the German Bishops' Conference, who has criticised Mr Woelki's crisis management, said he hopes a process of reconciliation will start in Cologne.
"I can't judge whether this can lead to a fundamentally different situation within a few months," Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing said in a statement, adding that much depends on how Mr Woelki uses his time off.
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