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Name: QUINN, Edel Mary

image of individual

Nee: dau of Charles and Louisa Quinn

Birth Date: 14 Sep 1907 Kanturk, Cork, Ireland

Death Date: 12 May 1944 Nairobi

First Date: 1936

Profession: Legion of Mary lay missionary

Area: Nairobi

Book Reference: Barnes

General Information:

The Pope  paid tribute to her great services to the Church. Eldest daughter of Charles & Louisa Quinn of Dublin
St Austin's cemetery, Nairobi Envoy of the Legion of Mary to East Africa from 30th October 1936 to 12th May 1944 on which day she died. She fulfilled this mission with such devotedness & courage as to stir every heart to leave the Legion of Mary and Africa herself forever in her debt.
Wikipedia - Edel Quinn felt a call to religious life at a young age. She wished to join the Poor Clares but was prevented by advanced tuberculosis.[1] After spending eighteen months in a sanatorium, her condition unchanged, she decided to become active in the Legion of Mary, which she joined in Dublin at age 20. She gave herself completely to its work in the form of helping the poor in the slums of Dublin.  
In 1936, at age 29 and dying of tuberculosis, Quinn became a Legion of Mary Envoy, a very active missionary to East and Central Africa, departing in December 1936 for Mombasa. Edel settled in Nairobi having been told by Bishop Heffernan that this was the most convenient base for her work. By the outbreak of World War II, she was working as far off as Dar es Salaam and Mauritius. In 1941, she was admitted to a sanatorium near Johannesburg.[1] Fighting her illness, in seven and a half years she established hundreds of Legion branches and councils in today's Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Mauritius. Fr. McCarthy, later Bishop of Zanzibar, wrote of her: "Miss Quinn is an extraordinary individual; courageous, zealous and optimistic. She wanders around in a dilapidated Ford, having for sole companion an African driver. When she returns home she will be qualified to speak about the Missions and Missionaries, having really more experience than any single Missionary I know." All this time her health was never good, and in 1943 she took a turn for the worse, dying in Nairobi, Kenya of tuberculosis in May 1944. She is buried there in the Missionaries' Cemetery. The cause for her beatification was introduced in 1956. She was declared venerable by Pope John Paul II on December 15, 1994, since when the campaign for her beatification has continued.

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