Page 25 - Priorities #66- Winter 2017

Father Pius
Remembers:
A Teacher’s Long Journey
By: Thea Sullivan
When he was young, Laszlo Horvath—Priory’s own Father Pius—was clear about one thing. He wanted to go to university and become a teacher. “Teaching was always in my mind, even
as a child,” he admits.
The quest to fulfill this goal became the defining journey of his life, guiding him over one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another, driving him out of his homeland and from behind the Iron Curtain, and eventually landing him in California where he’s lived now for fifty-six years.
At almost 87, Father Pius looks back on his choice to leave Hungary with mixed feelings. “I sometimes say to myself, ‘Would I have done that, taken that step of leaving my country and my family and everybody, if I had given it more time to think it over?’ I still don’t have the answer to that.”
But for a young person growing up in Eastern Europe in the turbulent years before, during and after World War II, getting an education was difficult, especially as an aspiring Benedictine priest. There were stops and starts, shifting borders, risks to consider and sudden decisions to be made.
During his school years, an early Communist takeover and subsequent war led to the re- drawing of national borders, and the Hungarian village where his family lived was suddenly part of Czechoslovakia. To avoid attending a Czech-speaking school, he had to move in with his grandparents in Hungary.
Painting of Fr. Pius by Zoe Ciupitu, Class of 2009
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