VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI will meet a German bishop who resigned in April following allegations that he hit children, but is unlikely to consider the bishop’s request to be reinstated, the Vatican said Wednesday (June 16).

Bishop Walter Mixa, who admitted to striking children in the 1970s and ’80s, told the German daily Die Welt he had been pressured into signing a resignation letter and now wants his old job back.

“I can confirm that the pope will have an audience with Monsignor Mixa,” Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said, “but the acceptance of the resignation as Augsburg bishop is not expected to be up for discussion.”

Mixa, who is reported to have moved back into the bishop’s palace in Augsburg, says the pope has invited him for talks.

“Above all I want to discuss how the situation should further develop,” he said, adding he would consider submitting his case to the Vatican’s court of appeals.

Mixa had initially denied reports of abuse and misusing church money, only to add later that he may have given a few children “a clip around the ear.” After his resignation on April 22, prosecutors launched an investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse against the bishop but later dropped the case.

The 69-year old prelate described the pressure to resign as being similar to “purgatory.” He claimed that Germany’s senior archbishop, Robert Zollitsch, and the head of Bavaria’s bishops, Archbishop Reinhard Marx, ran to the pope with a “so-called abuse case based on what amounts to no more than eight handwritten sentences on a highly dubious scribbled note.”

The German church responded with a statement saying “everything was done according to the rules.”