The Munich lawyer Marion Westpfahl is dead. She died at the age of 74 on August 16, according to an obituary published by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW). In recent years, the services of the law firm have been in demand, above all, by the Catholic Church. On behalf of the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, WSW prepared two reports on abuse that made headlines around the world (2010/2022) and another for the diocese of Aachen (2020).
The WSW lawyers also worked for the Archdiocese of Cologne. At the end of 2018, this commissioned an investigation. After other lawyers accused the expertise of “methodological deficiencies”, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki did not publish it and commissioned a new report from the Cologne criminal lawyer Björn Gercke. In 2021, journalists were still allowed to read the WSW report to a limited extent. In addition, the law firm represents the diocese of Eichstätt in the financial scandal that became known in 2019.
According to the website of her law firm, Westpfahl, who was born in Frankfurt am Main, studied law in Munich. She later worked as a public prosecutor and judge in a prominent position in Munich and from 1971 to 1982 as a training manager for legal trainees. In 1986, the lawyer received her doctorate from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. She has been working as a registered attorney since 1982.
The obituary, which is written on behalf of the lawyers and all other employees of the law firm, says: “Our colleague, but also our senior partner in particular, was our role model and contact person for all small and large problems for decades. She was our motherly advisor and experienced colleague.” Westpfahl will be missing. But she left behind experiences “that were formative for us and will remain so in the future”.
At the presentation of the second report for the archdiocese of Munich and Freising in January 2022, which examined sexual abuse in the archdiocese from 1945 to 2019, the lawyer spoke. She spoke of a “terrifying system of cover-ups”. In addition, the lawyer became personal. Westpfahl said that half a century ago she learned how to make a confession in First Communion classes. The children were encouraged to “examination of conscience”, to confess their sins and to repent. “What is asked of ten-year-old children must be the yardstick for the church and its leaders.” Anything else would be a betrayal of the foundations of the Christian faith.