Page 7 - Priorities #24 2003-October

Father Pius Horvath tells of a seventh-grader
he once caught doodling in class.“I didn’t want to be harsh,”he says. So instead of lecturing her about paying attention, Father Pius merely commented,“It seems
we have an artist in class.”The student looked up and, instead of apologizing, said,“Oh, thank you!”
Father Pius still chuckles at the student’s spunk. It helps explain why, at 73, having recently celebrated his 50th anniversary as a priest, the Benedictine monk continues to teach at Woodside Priory after most of his peers have retired. He loves the children.
According to Andy Schilling, a Priory trustee and alumnus, it wasn’t easy to put one over on Father Pius. In the late 1970s, when Schilling studied German under Father Pius, he and his fellow students decided that the language lab, with its individual dividers, was a perfect place to slip notes back and forth and even quietly
talk to each other.“Once Father Pius discovered this,
he developed an amazing ability to move quickly and silently through the rows.”
Where other teachers might be daunted by such student shenanigans, Father Pius appreciates their liveliness.“If I had to miss (being with) the kids, that would be a great vacuum in my life,”he says.
Father Pius was never daunted by modern technology, either—in fact, he was among the first on the Priory campus to see the computer’s potential for reaching across generations and geographic boundaries. Early on, he learned several computer programs
and was one of the first to create his own Web page.
He still goes online daily to search for news and to communicate with friends and associates here and abroad, says Rebecca Harper, Director of Technology.
Father Pius’s life began a world away, in a Hungarian section of Slovakia. He was one of two children born less than a year apart to a blacksmith and his wife.
When Father Pius was still a youth, he settled
on a career as a monk and teacher. His parents had discouraged him from following in his father’s footsteps. “My father said to my mother,‘That kid is not good’.” His father was talking about his ability with the smithing tools. But he could have been commenting on his son’s occasional misbehavior. Father Pius reports that he knew a little something about acting up.
“I did things like crossing the Danube River on a borrowed boat.”In winter, when the river froze
over, Father Pius would walk across it to see his grandmother in Hungary. It was dangerous not only because the ice could begin melting before his return trip but also because he risked being caught by border guards. He wasn’t caught, and as a young man in 1948, he entered the novitiate of the Benedictines at Archabbey of Pannonhalma, Hungary.
Risk would be a part of his life again. As a young priest, he crossed illegally into Austria in 1956 en route to Switzerland, where he helped minister to the Hungarian Catholic refugees. He accepted a scholarship at the Suisse University of Fribourg, studying German, French, literature and medieval history.
Years later, when he was living in the United States, he ran into peril on a visit to his parents in Czechoslovakia. It was Aug. 20,1968—the date is burned in Father Pius’memory—and the Russians occupied the country, stranding Father Pius there. Later he left for church and saw what must have been graffiti meant for the occupying soldiers in the street: “Go home!”But Father Pius saw it as a message for himself.
“I took it to heart for myself, how happy I would be to go home to California.”He made it to the Austrian border and, with the help of Slovakian border guards, crossed into Austria.“A great burden left my heart,”he said.
Father Pius never intended to focus on languages. He enjoyed learning them but did not have faith that he would master them enough to teach. So he planned to major in chemistry in Fribourg. His abbot had
other plans.“Since you are abroad, you should study languages,”came the order. And Father Pius did. He eventually became fluent in German, French, Latin and English.
But when he was called to join his Benedictine brothers at the new Woodside Priory in 1960, Father Pius was comfortable speaking only German and French. He enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University to continue his language studies and for the first term took courses taught in German and French while he worked on his own to learn English from talking to his fellow Priory monks. It wasn’t the best method, Father Pius says, because he acquired their Hungarian accent along with his English.
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“Father Pius could say mass faster than any other priest (11 minutes). This was all in Latin—the altar boys would strain to keep up.
“He’s always warm. He’s always had a very positive outlook on things.”
Greg Hampton, alumnus and
Priory boarding student in 1963