Father Joseph P. Gorman, retired pastor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini parish on Roosevelt Island, died June 16 at Mary Manning Walsh Home in Manhattan.  He was 73.

Father Gorman, whose immediate and extended family had many vocations, was pastor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini from 1985 to 1999, when he retired.  He was the second pastor of Cabrini parish.

Father Francis Gorman of St. Teresa of Avila in Sleepy Hollow, spoke in his homily of his cousin’s inspiration in a family in which four boys of their generation became priests and four girls became nuns.  “All of us admired and looked up to Joseph as the wise leader,” he said. “He was the first of four of us to go to Cathedral College right on to ordination.  He was our inspiration.”  He described his cousin as “a happy priest” who was “always grateful to be God’s instrument.”  He also recalled Father Joseph Gorman’s “gift with expressing the English language.”

“At his sister Anne’s funeral three years ago, he used the ‘e’ at the end of her name to mean ‘excellent’ in such a way that the word seemed to belong to her alone.  That was God’s gift to Joseph Gorman.”

Born in the Bronx, Father Gorman studied for the priesthood at Cathedral College and St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie.  He was ordained June 2, 1956.  He earned master’s degrees at Dunwoodie and at New York Theological Seminary in Manhattan.

Before coming to Roosevelt Island, he had served as pastor at St. John Vianney parish in the Bronx, and had been parochial vicar at Holy Trinity parish in Manhattan from 1956 to 1969. He was on the faculty of Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, 1969-1976.

Father Gorman is survived by two sisters, Sister Rose Ellen Gorman, O.P., and Jeanne Hveem. He was predeceased by a sister, Anne McCauley, and two brothers, Richard Gorman and Msgr. James T. Gorman, a former pastor of St. Patrick’s parish in Bedford, who died in 2002.

Cardinal Egan offered the funeral mass on June 21 at St. Brendan’s Church in the Bronx, where Father Gorman’s brother-in-law, Deacon Paul Hveem, is assigned.  Burial was in St. Johns Cemetery in Queens.  A memorial mass is planned for October on the Island.