The former head of the Vatican’s doctrine office has denied reports that he was dismissed by Pope Francis after a brief discussion of Church teaching. In a story in the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost, journalist Guido Horst said that Cardinal Gerhard Müller “could not believe his eyes” upon reading the claims made by the website OnePeterFive. “‘This is not true; the conversation was quite different,’” Mr Horst reported Cardinal Müller as saying. OnePeterFive cited a “trustworthy German source” who quoted an eyewitness “who recently sat with Cardinal Müller at lunch in Mainz” and allegedly heard the cardinal’s account of the meeting with Pope Francis before he was removed as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The article claimed the Pope asked the cardinal’s stance on women deacons and priests, the repeal of celibacy, the exhortation Amoris Laetitia and the dismissal of three employees of the CDF. It alleged that, following the cardinal’s responses, the Pope said he would not renew his mandate and left the room “without any farewell or explanation”. Die Tagespost reported that Cardinal Müller said the account of the meeting by the alleged German source “was false”. The claims made in OnePeterFive were reprinted in Italian by journalist Marco Tosatti, who received a message denying the claims from Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. In the message, shown to Catholic News Service, Burke told Tosatti that the reconstruction of the meeting “is totally false. I ask that you publish what I have written.” Cardinal Müller had earlier told the German daily Allgemeine Zeitung that “there were no disagreements between Pope Francis and me” and that there had been no dispute over Amoris Laetitia. But he has also criticised the manner of his dismissal, calling it “unacceptable”. In an interview with the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, the cardinal said the Pope had told him his five-year mandate would not be renewed “within a minute” of that mandate expiring. “He did not give a reason,” he said. “Just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months earlier.” He added: “I cannot accept this way of doing things. As a bishop, one cannot treat people in this way.”