Olga Fairfax - Requiescat In Pace

On Thursday November 21, 2024, between 5:30 - 6:30pm, a massive fire started suddenly in the Wheaton MD home of Olga Fairfax, a long-time indefatigable pro-life activist.  She was trapped inside and herself caught fire.  She managed to stagger outside where first responders tried to assist her.  However, she soon succumbed to her injuries and passed away.

I've known Olga through many years of being with her in front of abortuaries, in various pickets and in other pro-life events.  However, she was active in the pro-life movement long before I was.  Her parents were Christian but not Catholic.  In her early adulthood, she was an ordained Methodist minister, but soon found herself at odds with that church hierarchy, for they were officially embracing both abortion and the various homosexual perversions.  In 1978, she resigned her post as associate pastor of Glenmont Methodist Church in Wheaton.

She did start a pro-life group within the Methodist church.  While researching material for this post, I discovered that while still a leader of Methodists for Life, she helped 30 women, seeking abortions at Columbia Hospital, to choose life for her children.  This I learned from a Washington Post article in 1985, approximately 39 years ago.

As I said earlier, I worked with her most frequently in front of abortion mills, particularly in front of the Planned Parenthood (now closed) on Spring Street in Silver Spring.  She was not at all shy or demure about chiding the deathscorts or pro-abortion passers-by.  I can still hear her saying to them, "only big babies are pro-choice!" or "why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

Olga, with Jack Ames, giving a talk

She was not at all shy about confronting clergy who were not-so-secretly pro-abortion, or, at best, indifferent to it.  She told me of an encounter with the now-disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, when the latter offered a Saturday evening Mass at St. Catherine Laboure in Wheaton.  I forget now just what the topic of Olga's complaint was, but after Mass, she waited until McCarrick left the church and headed for the rectory.  The parish priest saw her and tried to usher McCarrick quickly to the rectory to avoid Olga, but to no avail.  Olga walked right along with them, trying to get a reply from McCarrick, chasing him to the rectory door.

In June 2010, several of us protested the commencement ceremony where Sr Carol Keehan gave the convocation address.  She is a supposed sister who was instrumental in convincing several Catholic congressmen to vote for Obamacare.  We saw that McCarrick was there to offer the Mass.  Olga again let McCarrick hear some truth.  That was caught on this video.  By the way - we found out, years later, that in 2010 McCarrick was under orders by the now-deceased Pope Benedict XVI not to make any public appearances.  So not only was he honoring a pro-abort nun, he was thumbing his nose at the reigning pontiff at the time.  To get to Olga's rebuke to McCarrick, you can advance to the 3:15 mark.

She still continued to maintain a presence at abortuaries, even after she was assaulted in July 2023.   Her last appearance, as far as I know, was her participation in the 2024 Face the Truth Tour sponsored by Defend Life.

Let us pray for her eternal repose, and consolation for her family.  Let us all emulate her tenacity.  She, no doubt, is praying for us.