A close friend of Pope Benedict XVI who has already offered to resign after admitting that he hit children in his care is now being investigated over allegations of paedophilia.
Prosecutors in the southern city of Augsburg said that they had opened a preliminary probe into Walter Mixa after media reports said he had been accused of sexually abusing a boy while bishop of Eichstaett between 1996 and 2005.
The 69-year-old bishop for weeks rebuffed allegations that he beat children at a Roman Catholic orphanage in the 1970s and 1980s. But, in the face of several sworn statements from his accusers, the bishop from the Pope's native Bavaria later admitted that he "may have" slapped the children while a priest. On April 21 he tendered his resignation after admitting giving youngsters in his care "a slap in the face or two", which he said was "completely normal back then."
The scandal has badly damaged the standing of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, and also of the Pope, whose appointment five years ago as leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics was a source of great national pride.
The Augsburger Allgemeine daily cited a lawyer for Bishop Mixa, long known as a hardliner who in February blamed sexual abuse of children by priests in part on "the so-called sexual revolution", as rejecting the latest accusations.