Cardinal George Pell's lawyer apologises for 'terrible choise of phrase' during trial
The former Vatican treasurer is the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted for child sex offences.
Robert Richter, who presented Pell's defence in court, had tried to argue that his client's offences were at the low-end of the scale, at one point saying it was "no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case" where the child did not willingly take part, an argument quickly dismissed by the judge.
"In seeking to mitigate sentence, I used a wholly inappropriate phrase for which I apologise profusely to all who interpreted it in a way it was never intended," Mr Richter said.
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