St. Michael's Abbey founding abbot dies at 94

By Lindsey Baguio
Orange County Register
January 7, 2010

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/abbey-227539-parker-michael.html

Rev. Ladislas Parker died Sunday at the age of 94 following decades of service as a priest and educator.

A Norbertine priest who escaped communist Hungary and was the founding head of St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado has died.

Rev. Ladislas Parker, who was St. Michael's Abbey's first abbot, died Sunday. He was 94. Parker was among seven Hungarian refugees who used their savings to establish what would become St. Michael's Abbey.

The Rev Ladislas Parker of St. Michael's Abbey saying Mass in 1995.

Rev. Jerome Molokie, associate director of development at St. Michael's Abbey, said he will remember Parker as a humble, well-spoken, intelligent, and faithful man.

"He was someone who was able to lead in a gentle but firm way," said Molokie. "When I first met him I was astounded with the depth and breadth of his cultural formation. He was like the air we breathe. He was the foundation – literally founded us – and that's gone now. He was part of a generation that will never be replaced."

Parker was born in Vaskeresztes, Hungary on Dec. 19, 1915.

It was at the abbey, located in the Saddleback foothills, where he was in his element. He told The Orange County Register in 1995 that he loved the outdoors. His father owned a vineyard before his death in World War I.

He was raised by his mother and blacksmith grandfather, who wanted him to run the farm.

Parker had another plan.

"When I was 5, I'd turn the kitchen stool upside down and pretend it was a pulpit," he said in the 1995 interview.

He attended school at Szombathely, a preparatory school (gymnasium), run by the Norbertines' from the Abbey of St. Michael in Csorna. When Parker graduated he entered the abbey's novitiate and completed his priestly studies. He was ordained a priest on August 20, 1940.

He was sent to Gregorian University in Rome where he pursued theological studies at the doctoral level.

When he returned from his studies, Parker was named master of novices and professor of moral theology at the abbey, posts he filled until his escape from communist Hungary in July 1950.

At the time, communists in Hungary repressed Parker's religious order, the Norbertines.

Many seminaries were closed, Parker told the Register. Warned that theirs was next, Parker and six other professors made a harrowing escape into Austria – crawling under barbed wire fences, dodging mines and communist soldiers, and swimming across a river before ultimately making their way to America.

The order sent the seven to its abbey in Dupere, Wisconsin where they served in a parish and taught school.

In 1957 they came to Santa Ana to teach at Mater Dei High School at the invitation of Cardinal James McIntyre of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

He and the other monks saved their teaching salaries and, in 1961, founded St. Michael's Priory, along with a seminary, and St. Michael's College Prep High School for boys.

In June 1975 the community became an independent priory and Parker was elected prelate. In August 1984, the priory became an abbey and the Norbertines made Father Parker abbot, the abbey's first.

When he was 75 in 1990 he was re-elected prelate. Parker became abbot emeritus when he resigned in June 1995. By that time the community had grown to 41 priests and 60 members at other stages of formation, preparing for the priesthood.

The abbey has arranged for the funeral Mass to be held at San Juan Capistrano Mission Basilica on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. The burial will be held at Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest at 11:30 a.m. A reception will follow at 12:30 p.m.