A Hungarian Piarist monk and teacher who emigrated to the United States after World War II and was one of the founding members of the first American community of Hungarian Piarists. Despite his brief time in the United States, he played a role in organizing the order’s establishment in North America and in the work of the community that laid the groundwork for the later founding of Devon Preparatory School.
He was born on November 23, 1916, in Szentjakabfa. He entered the Piarist Order on August 27, 1935, in Vác, where he received the religious name Saint Imre. He took his solemn vows in 1940 and was ordained a priest on July 14, 1942. He earned his teaching degree in Hungarian and French. Even as a young teacher, he became involved in Piarist Scouting; he was one of the leaders of the Scout troop at the Piarist high school in Budapest, and served as camp commander at camps in Hahót in 1946 and in the Mátrafüred area in 1947.
He began his priestly ministry in 1943 in Mosonmagyaróvár, where he served as a teacher at the Piarist high school. After World War II, from 1946 to 1947, he taught Hungarian and French at the Piarist high school in Budapest, after which he was reassigned to Mosonmagyaróvár. According to the order’s records, he also taught French and served as a form teacher and Scout leader.
In 1949, following the dissolution of religious orders in Hungary, he left the country and joined the first group of Hungarian Piarists to settle in the United States. As a member of the community being organized in Buffalo, he helped lay the foundations for the American province of the order. In 1951, the community moved to Derby, where the first Hungarian Piarist house in the United States was established. At that time, the members of the order still assisted at several parishes, took on occasional teaching positions, and pursued studies at American universities.
In 1952, he became a teacher at Father Baker High School in Lackawanna. The Hungarian Piarists established a separate community in the city, of which Ferenc Senye was a member. There, he primarily worked as a high school teacher while helping to build the Hungarian Piarists’ network of schools in the United States.
In 1954, at the invitation of John F. O’Hara, Archbishop of Philadelphia, he moved to Pennsylvania with a group of Hungarian Piarists. He taught at schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia while helping to lay the groundwork for the founding of what would later become Devon Preparatory School. However, he did not live to see the school’s opening: although the purchase agreement for the Devon property was signed in September 1955 and the school opened its doors in September 1956, Ferenc Senye passed away during the preparatory period.
After a prolonged illness, he died on November 30, 1955, at Misericordia Hospital in Philadelphia, barely a week after his 39th birthday.