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Today’s missionary hero was a Twentieth Century lay woman named Edel Mary Quinn.
Edel was born on September 14, 1907 in Castlemanger, County Cork, Ireland, the eldest child of a bank manager and his wife.
From a young age, Edel felt that God was calling her to the religious life. She wanted to join the Poor Clares, but that was impossible because she had advanced tuberculosis (Tb). Despite spending 18 months in a tuberculosis sanitorium, her condition did not improve. So, at the age of 20, she joined the Legion of Mary in Dublin. Immediately, she began serving the poor in the slums of Dublin.
In 1936, at the age of 29, Edel knew she was dying of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, she decided to spend the rest of her life as a foreign missionary in Africa as a Legion of Mary missionary. Following the advice of a bishop in Kenya, Edel made her base of operations in Nairobi, capital of Kenya. By the time World War II broke out, she was serving all over Kenya and other African nations. Edel, as an official representative of the Legion of Mary, established hundreds of Legion branches and councils in the nations that today are known as Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Fr. J.J. McCarthy, who would one day become the bishop of Zanzibar and Archbishop of Nairobi, wrote this about Edel:
“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.”
In 1941, Edel was admitted to a sanitorium near Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1943, her tuberculosis became much worse, and she died May 12, 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya. She is buried in the missionaries’ cemetery.
Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed Edel to be a Venerable in 1994, so the cause for her beatification is under way.
There are several books on Amazon.com about Venerable Edel Mary Quinn.
All this before she turned 38, I am in awe.