Her first name really was "Edelweiss - after the flower", recalled Tom McCormick, nephew of Legion of Mary missionary Edel Quinn, in Monkstown, Co Dublin yesterday. "And I called my daughter Edel after her, which causes its own problems when it comes to passports and the like," he added.
He was speaking outside 22 Trafalgar Terrace, where a short time beforehand the Archbishop of Nairobi, Dr Ndingi Mwana 'A Nzeki, and the parish priest of Monkstown, Fr Martin Clarke, unveiled a plaque to his aunt.
Edel Quinn was born in September 1907 and joined the Legion of Mary in 1929. In 1936 she went as a missionary to east Africa, working in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. She died in Nairobi from TB in 1944 and is buried there
She had lived in an apartment at Trafalgar Terrace from 1925 to 1935.
The archbishop urged the people of Ireland "in God's name to get about whatever it takes" where the beatification and canonisation of Edel Quinn was concerned.
She was declared "venerable" by Pope John Paul in 1994. "Report to the big man in Rome [ the pope] everything granted through her intercession," he said.