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Father Brocard Connors, O. Carm., a former director of lay Carmelites for the North American Province of St. Elias, died Jan. 4 at Ferncliff Nursing Home in Rhinebeck. He was 74. He was director of lay Carmelites, while based in Tappan, from 1993 to 2004. In 2005, he was assigned to be a chaplain at Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan, but served only six months because of health reasons. A teacher in various Catholic high schools from 1957 to 1979, he taught in the archdiocese at St. Albert’s Junior Seminary, Middletown, 1958-1959 and 1961-1962. In 1980, he was assigned to the newly built Pope John Paul II High School in Boca Raton, Fla., where he remained until 1988; he then served in Williamstown, Mass., until 1992. A native of Dobbs Ferry, he professed first vows as a Carmelite in 1951 and final vows in 1954. He was ordained in 1957. He is survived by two brothers, Eugene and Kevin, and a sister, Patricia Benedetto. Also surviving are nieces and nephews, including Father Luke M. Sweeney, archdiocesan vocations director, who presided at an evening prayer service for his uncle Jan. 6 at St. Albert’s Chapel at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Middletown. Father Michael Kissane, O. Carm., the provincial, offered the funeral Mass at the shrine on Jan. 7. Burial was in the Carmelite Cemetery in Middletown.
