Edel Quinn

During her childhood, her father's career brought the family to various towns in Ireland, including Tralee, Co. Kerry, where a plaque was unveiled in May 2009 at Bank Of Ireland House in Denny Street commemorating her residence there between 1921 and 1924. Quinn attended the Presentation Convent in the town between 1921-1925.

The cause for her beatification was introduced in 1957. She was declared venerable by Pope John Paul II on 15 December 1994, since when the campaign for her beatification has continued.

All this time her health was never good, and in 1943 she took a turn for the worse, dying in Nairobi, Kenya of tuberculosis on 12 May 1944. She is buried there in the Missionaries' Cemetery.

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. Quinn 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. 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. J.J. McCarthy, later Bishop of Zanzibar and Archbishop of Nairobi, wrote of her:

Edel Mary Quinn, (14 September 1907 – 12 May 1944) known as Edel Quinn was an Irish-born Roman Catholic lay-missionary and Envoy of the Legion of Mary to East Africa.