WARSAW (AFFP)---A retired Polish bishop who said "the Shoah as such is a Jewish invention" has apologized for the remark in a statement published by the Roman Catholic information agency in Poland.   

"Of course my unfortunate statement, which was the result of a mental shortcut, does not express my views," Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek said in the statement published by the KAI agency.   

Pieronek's remarks were published on January 25 by pontifex.roma.it, a Rome-based traditionalist Roman Catholic website.   

"While it is undeniable that most of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, there were also gypsies, Poles, Italians and Catholics on the list," Tadeusz Pieronek was quoted as saying in an interview published on the website.   

"So it is not permissible to appropriate this tragedy for propaganda," he said in the interview which was published just before the 65th International Holocaust Remembrance Day.   

"There were lots of Poles, but this truth is often ignored today," added Pieronek who is 75.   

"The Shoah as such is a Jewish invention," said the former spokesman of Poland's Bishops Conference. The Shoah is "used as a propaganda weapon and to obtain advantages that are often unjustified", he added.   

In his apology Monday, Pieronek said he "was thinking of the word, the expression, the term 'Shoah' that American Nobel laureate and Jewish writer Elie Wiesel used to call the genocide against Jews."   

"The author of the idea and the perpetrator of this unheard of genocide was Hitler's Germany," Pieronek said.   

"I apologise very much to Mr. Bruno Volpe personally and to all those who were offended by my unfortunate and unintentional statement," Pieronek said, naming a pontifex.roma.it editor who published the controversial interview with him.   

Pieronek had alleged Volpe had misquoted him   

"It was not my intention to falsify history or to accuse anyone of ill will," Pieronek said. "What can I say? I made a fatal professional mistake, I'm sorry," Pieronek added.   

During World War II six million European Jews were killed under Nazi Germany's so-called "Final Solution" plan of genocide against Jews.