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Edel Quinn was born on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 1907 at Greenane in the parish of Castlemagner near Kanturk, County Cork.
[...] At age twenty Edel was working as a secretary proving to be most efficient and conscientious. At this time the spiritual side of her life was becoming more dominant. She joined the Legion of Mary in Dublin.
Edel’s destiny was to be linked to the Legion perhaps more than she knew. In 1932 when about to join the poor Clare Convent in Belfast, a contemplative order, it was discovered she had advanced tuberculosis of the lungs. This would eventually end her life. An eighteen-month stay in a sanatorium followed. Towards the end of 1933 she went back to her office job and her beloved Legion. She spent time visiting the sick and the needy.
In 1936, with her health still failing, Edel responded to a call to go as envoy to Africa. In November 1936, she arrived in Mombasa, Kenya. Within 14 days she had set up the first praesidium, Legion group, called “The Immaculate Conception”. Like everything else she had tackled previously, Edel threw herself into fulfilling her role, which was to bring Catholics of all ethnic backgrounds to work together through Our Lady.
Within five months, Edel had founded the first Curia (a governing council of the Legion for guiding praesidia).
In the period 1937 – 1940 she introduced the Legion to Uganda, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Nyasaland (Malawi) and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
She organized the translations and printing of prayers in several different languages and dialects. During her many hospital spells she continued her work through correspondence.
By 1943, the tuberculosis was well advanced and even Edel had to admit she was slowing down considerably. Yet she still continued her travels.
By November 1943, her hard labor had paid off. Hundreds of Legion groups were thriving on African soil thanks to this single-minded Irish woman.
The disease, fought for so long, finally defeated Edel on May 12, 1944. Receiving the last rites at the Convent of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Nairobi, she spoke her last words: “What is happening to me? Is Jesus coming?”
She was 36 years old.
In 1963 the process of her canonization was opened in Nairobi and Dublin. On December 15, 1994 Pope John Paul II solemnly proclaimed her heroic sanctity, declaring her “Venerable”:
“It is certain that the Servant of God, Edel Mary Quinn, a secular virgin of the Legion of Mary practiced to a heroic degree the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity towards God and her neighbor and likewise the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude".