For the second time in a bit more than a week death has visited the class of 1948. Father Gerard J. McGann, former pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Carver, died on March 3. Father Walter Casey died on Feb. 21.

A Boston native, Father Gerard McGann grew up in West Roxbury and attended school at St. Raphael, Hyde Park and Boston College High School. He would have been a member of Boston College’s Class of 1944, however he moved across Commonwealth Avenue to the seminary and on completion of seminary formation Archbishop Richard Cushing ordained him at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on May 6, 1948.

He served as an assistant at three archdiocesan parishes: St. Michael, Avon (1948-1949); St. Rita, Lowell (1949-1952) and St. Mary, Charlestown (1952-1962).

He was granted permission to enter the Chaplain Corps of the United States Air Force and he served at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada from 1962-1965.

On his return to the archdiocese, he also returned to parish ministry serving again as an assistant this time at St. Paul, Wellesley (1965-1968) and then at St. Helen, Mother of the Emperor Constantine Parish, Norwell (1968-1977).

Cardinal Humberto Medeiros named him administrator of St. Edward the Confessor Parish in Medfield in January 1977 and as an associate at Sacred Heart, Middleborough in September 1978.

On July 17, 1979 he became pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Carver where he served until Cardinal Bernard Law accepted his request to retire and granted him senior priest/retirement status on Nov. 12, 1991. He retired to his own home in Sandwich.

Former Central Regional Bishop John Boles was scheduled to be the celebrant of Father McGann’s funeral Mass at Most Precious Blood Parish in Boston’s Hyde Park section on March 8.

Father McGann is survived by his nieces and nephews. His brother Leo, also a priest of the archdiocese, died on March 25, 1988. Father McGann will be buried in Fairview Cemetery, Hyde Park.