When Archbishop J. Michael Miller conferred the papal Benemerenti medal on Rosemarie Wertschek in 2013, the accomplished tax lawyer told The B.C. Catholic exactly what she planned to do with the certificate: frame it and display it in her downtown Vancouver office.
“It’s a very secular workplace,” she said. “I’d just as soon have my colleagues notice that you can be recognized for more than one thing.”
On Nov. 6, H.E. Rosemarie Wertschek, DC*HS, KC, Lieutenant of Honour of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and one of Western Canada’s most respected corporate-tax lawyers, died peacefully in hospital at the age of 76 after a prolonged illness.
A lifelong parishioner of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, Wertschek served the Archdiocese of Vancouver with distinction for decades, most notably as an 18-year member of the Archdiocesan Finance Council and as a generous benefactor to her home parish, including major renovation projects. She was also a founding member of the St. Thomas More Guild for lawyers in the Archdiocese and, in the mid-1980s, represented the Archdiocese on the board of the Canadian Bible Association at the invitation of the late Archbishop James Carney.
Reflecting on her papal honour in a 2013 B.C. Catholic interview, Wertschek recalled how her volunteer service began with that board appointment and snowballed from there. “Word got around, people asked me to serve” in other roles, she said. Later, Archbishop Adam Exner approached her to join the finance council, a position she held for nearly two decades. She credited the experience with enriching her professional career and personal spiritual growth.
In 2015, she made history as the first woman invested as Lieutenant of the Vancouver Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, later promoted to Lieutenant of Honour. Members remember her calm leadership, organization, and two joyful pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
Born in 1949 to Croatian parents who spent years in a displaced-persons camp in Austria after World War II, Wertschek immigrated to Canada as a child, learned English in a one-room Manitoba schoolhouse, graduated from UBC law school, and rose to national prominence in tax law, first at Shrum, Liddle & Hebenton and later at McCarthy Tetrault.
Her funeral Mass will be Monday, Nov. 24, at 11 a.m. at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Vancouver.
