April 22, 2025 – Fr. Andrew L. Szebenyi, SJ, was born in Szeged, Hungary, on November 20, 1928, the younger of his parents’ two sons. Fr. Szebenyi and his family were traumatized by the events of the Second World War whose brutality they experienced, quite literally, at their doorstep. Fr. Szebenyi himself reported that, after the war, in early 1947, when he was planning to go to medical school, he was first struck with an unexpected but strong desire to become a priest. That desire never left him and in August of 1947 he entered the Jesuit novitiate, Manréza, in Budapest.
During his novitiate, an anti-religion communist regime was well in control of the government, and it became clear that Fr. Szebenyi (and his fellow novices) would never be able to become priests in Hungary. Organized by the novice master, 12 novices, including Fr. Szebenyi, endured a harrowing, danger-filled, escape from Hungary to Vienna in Austria, through the Iron Curtain, and on to the American zone in Mariazell. Shaken in body and spirit, but safe and sound, they moved from there to the Jesuit novitiate in Sankt Andrä, where Fr. Szebenyi finished his novitiate and took his first vows. They later learned that another group of novices who tried to escape at the same time did not fare so well: they were apprehended and imprisoned.
After the novitiate Fr. Szebenyi moved on to Germany for Juniorate studies and then to Belgium for Philosophy. Next came eight years in England, at Oxford University and then Heythrop College, where Fr. Szebenyi finished his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood on the feast of St. Ignatius in 1961.
Fr. Szebenyi later moved on to do doctoral studies at Syracuse University in New York. In Syracuse he lived in the Jesuit Community at Le Moyne College and did some teaching there. He earned his PhD. in biology in 1972. All in all, Fr. Szebenyi spent 48 years at Le Moyne, 38 years as a teacher and 10 more years as “Jesuit Scientist in Residence.” That Jesuit scientist had a personal mission statement which began: “My mission is to understand nature, the created given, of which God said, ‘It is good’, and with that knowledge heal all sinful cultural biases, and so promote our well being.” Serious professor and scientist though he was, and loved by his students for sure, for many years Fr. Szebenyi looked forward to his parish calls for weekday and Sunday Masses and especially enjoyed regularly saying Mass in the Le Moyne chapel for Hungarian Catholics in Syracuse.
In 2017, Fr. Szebenyi was close to 90 years old when he moved to the Jesuit health center at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx and was able to endear himself to all. He referred to his time at Murray-Weigel as his final “semester in the school of life. When this is done, there is the time of graduation, when I can take my hat and throw it in the air as high as I can. Then comes real life, a life that does not know death.”
While at Murray-Weigel Hall, Fr. Szebenyi loved tooling around, both indoors and out, in his electric scooter which he affectionately referred to as his “pony.” Breakfast was his favorite meal and, except for Mass, it seemed to be the high point of his day. He could be seen each morning happily sprinkling his eggs with both hot and sweet paprika. He would be sure to remind everyone that it is pronounced “PAP-rika,” like “SZE-benyi,” with the accent on the first “SYL-lable.” And he would gladly point out that the brand of paprika he used was named “The Pride of Szeged,” Fr. Szebenyi’s hometown, whose package featured an illustration of that city’s famed cathedral. Szeged is also, coincidently, the home of The Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Committed and competent biologist that he was, we can surely think of him also as “The Pride of Szeged,” if not the pride of the Hungarian Jesuit Province.
After several weeks of failing health, Fr. Szebenyi died peacefully in his room at Murray-Weigel Hall on April 15, 2025. We are confident that he is now living that “real life” of which he spoke, happily with the Lord he served so faithfully in that heavenly kingdom where the PAP-rika is the absolute best.
