Pope Benedict XVI has thanked Maltese prisoners for the letter they sent him ahead of his visit last month but made no mention of their request for him to make a plea for their amnesty.

Using St Paul for reference, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out that the saint was a prisoner but felt free in Christ.

He quoted Romans 38-39: "For I [Paul] am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

A week before his visit, 330 of the 570 prison inmates had signed a petition calling on Pope Benedict XVI to ask the government to grant them "some kind of amnesty".

In their letter, they said: "Some of us here are sentenced: some, justifiably; several, unduly harshly; a few, unjustly - two factors we all have in common: our incarceration and our misery."

They expressed the hope that the visit to a country that owed its faith to St Paul - a Roman prisoner at the time of his shipwreck in Malta - would bring solace to them and their families.

In his letter, Pope Benedict XVI said that he was "especially mindful of those who suffer in any way - the sick, the elderly, the housebound and those like yourselves who are in prison".

He thanked them for their letter and assured them of his "spiritual closeness".