Page 26 - Priorities #66- Winter 2017

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At his new Benedictine school, he tutored small groups of younger students. “My family was not well off, so I was trying at least to earn my tuition,” he ex- plains. Though only in seventh grade, he discovered he loved teaching. “My idea, my purpose, was to study to become a priest and a teacher. That’s what Benedictines did,” Pius says.
A few years later, Laszlo’s plans were once again thrown into chaos. In 1945, just as he was starting high school, the war ended and the new Communist regime closed the schools. He moved back home to Czecho- slovakia and joined an “underground school” run by Father Christopher, a teacher who, many years later, would help establish the Priory and invite the younger monk to join him in California.
Studying without a school was only half the battle for Laszlo. He also had to cross the border into Hun- gary to take an annual exam. Permits were hard to come by since the new Soviet regime fomented tension among its satellites to prevent uprisings. Many times, he crossed illegally, swimming across the wide Dan- ube River or scrambling across chunks of ice to get to the other side.
Finally, after four years of piecemeal education and clandestine river crossings, he received his high school diploma.
Next, he entered the novitiate at Pannonhalma, the Benedictine abbey in Hungary, a cause for celebra- tion but also sadness. The seven years of seminary and teacher training would mean a long exile from his fam- ily. Given heightening political tensions, a single visit
home to Czechoslovakia might mean never returning to Pannonhalma again.
As it would throughout his life, Pius’s commit- ment to education exacted a steep price. With only a year to go until his ordination and with teacher train- ing and university finally within his grasp, the Soviet regime cracked down further. The Benedictine order was reduced by three-quarters, and Laszlo was trans- ferred, along with his final-year classmates, to an over- crowded diocesan seminary to complete ordination. He was luckier than some, but plans for university study were once again on the chopping block.
“I had to take off my scapular,” Father Pius re- members, pointing to his robes, “and dress like a secular priest. That was a heartbreaking experience.” The seminarians were cold, poorly fed and crammed into a space designed for half their number. And they had to watch what they did and said. “We were spied on by moles,” explains Pius, “including by some of our teachers under pressure by the government.” They listened to the radio program Voice of America, but it was risky. “It was hard to know who to trust,” Pius says.
Such risks continued as the newly ordained Father Pius was assigned to parish work. “You had to be al- ways careful, who you talked to, how you preached. Because the system was spying on you,” he says, but he wants it known that he didn’t leave the country out of fear. “I was cautious,” he explains. “I couldn’t al- ways avoid compromising situations, but somehow I managed.”
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