Edel Quinn combined devotion with a great zest for life. Talented and expressive, she found her life’s work through the lay organisation, the Legion of Mary, and through it became a lay missionary in East Africa. John Murray tells her story.
‘The glory of God is in a fully alive person,’ the great bishop and saint of Lyons, Irenaeus, wrote in the second century. Another saint of a different era, Teresa of Avila, remarked on one occasion, ‘From long-faced saints deliver us, O Lord’.
Life to the full
The person I want to talk to you about in this month of mission awareness (October) is not yet a canonised saint of the Church, but she is in the waiting room. She certainly qualifies as a person who lived life to the full, and was far from the long-faced saints feared by St. Teresa.
Edel Quinn was born in Kanturk in County Cork in 1907. Her father and mother were devout parents, but because of his job as a bank clerk, the family were often on the move, and the young Edel found herself attending schools in Clonmel and Cahir, Enniscorthy and Tralee.
From early on, daily Mass was very much part of her routine, but she combined devotion with a great zest for life. She learned to play the piano and violin, and enjoyed swimming and tennis. She even learned the movements of Spanish dancing, and taught these to an appreciative local following.
Vocation
Following school, Edel began work as a typist. Her first employer would eventually sell-up shop and enter the Beda seminary for older vocations in Rome. In due time, Mr O’Hanlon became a priest. Her new employer was French. Pierre was enchanted by Edel’s good looks and her warm personality. Often the two would play tennis and even dance and party together. In a short time Pierre realized he was in love with this beautiful woman but, sadly for him, his love was not reciprocated.
Edel confided one evening that she wanted to become a contemplative nun. Pierre was shattered, but would remain always grateful to Edel for the many happy memories she had left him.
Legion of Mary
Before her plans to enter the convent were realized, however, there was another chapter in her life which ultimately would prove to be decisive. It was while she was working in Dublin that she first came into contact with the Legion of Mary, a lay organization which had just begun life in that city. It became famous for its street ministry and door-to-door outreach, as well as other spiritual works of mercy.
Soon, Edel’s dedication and efficiency were noted, and she was appointed to lead a branch of the Legion, called a Praesidium. It ministered to women in one of the poorest areas of inner-city Dublin. Many of these women fell into prostitution to make ends meet. Often, Edel would visit these women after a long day in the office as a typist.
Edel’s reading of the writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux made a deep impression on her, as she tried to emulate the Little Flower’s practice of doing little things as perfectly as possible.
She would often endeavour to find opportunities to make small and hidden sacrifices. Edel would spend at least half an hour before the Blessed Sacrament each day, and she would also recite all fifteen of the Mysteries of the Rosary.
Overcoming obstacles
Her health intervened, however, when she was diagnosed as having a severe case of tuberculosis, and had to spend a period of eighteen months in a sanatorium. On her recovery, she resumed her work as a typist and some of her Legion duties, even to the point of volunteering to go to England to help bolster the faith there.
Then there came a call from the bishops of Zanzibar and Nairobi for a Legion envoy to go out to start groups of lay people to evangelise Africa. As soon as she heard the call, this sickly young woman knew that that was where God wanted her, and that he would provide the strength. Needless to say there was plenty of opposition from family and friends, and even from Legion members, who thought someone stronger should go.
However, the Legion council obviously heard the Lord’s voice, and Edel was duly sent. For the next few years, Edel went from mission station to mission station, through difficult territory, in ten vast dioceses of East Africa, forming lay leaders to evangelise their own people. lt was peer evangelisation, and it was rooted in the culture of the area.
Tireless dedication
Edel would never let her own standards slip. Despite the problems of the terrain and sometimes of the transport, she always insisted that people turn up for meetings, and she herself set the standard in this regard. The sound of her old car often pierced the silence of the African night, but was also a welcome sound in the mission stations.
The earlier years of ill-health in Ireland began to take their toll, however. One visit to Malawi in 1941 was particularly perilous. She arrived at a convent one night, and was immediately put to bed by the French Canadian sisters, one of whom stayed with her all night. In the morning, Edel whispered, ‘Don’t worry about me, Sister. Our Lady has told me that I have three more years to work for her’. Finally her health did give out, in 1944, and she died and was buried in Nairobi.
Often, when people quote those lines of St. Irenaeus about a person being fully alive, they omit the second half of the sentence: ‘and that person is fully alive who sees God face to face’. Edel who lived life to the full, was now more alive than ever.
When all is told
On 15 December 1994, Pope John Paul declared Edel Venerable, and the beatification process is proceeding satisfactorily.
A simple poem by her close friend and fellow Legionary, Mona Tierney, was one of Edel’s favourites. It is a fitting way to end.
What is all, when all is told,
That ceaseless striving for fame and gold,
The passing joys and the bitter tears?
We are only here for a few short years.
What is all, just passing through?
A cross for me and a cross for you.
Ours seemed heavy when others’ seemed light,
But God in the end sets all things right.
He tempers the dark with heavenly gold,
And that is all when all is told.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (October 2005), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
