Edel Quinn

The Venerable Edel Mary Quinn (September 14, 1907 - May 12, 1944) was an Irish lay missionary.

Born in Kanturk, County Cork, Edel Quinn felt a call to religious life at a young age, but ill health prevented it. She joined the Legion of Mary in Dublin at age 20 and 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 missionary to East and Central Africa. 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. She died in Nairobi, Kenya, of tuberculosis and 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.

Biographies of Edel Quinn have been written by the late Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, and the Irish priest and historian Fr. Desmond Forristal.