Tom Monaghan

Tom Monaghan (born March 25, 1937 in Ann Arbor, Michigan), formally known as Thomas S. Monaghan, is a Catholic entrepreneur and philanthropist from Michigan who founded Domino's Pizza in 1960.

He and his wife, the former Marjorie Zybach, a Lutheran, were married in 1962 and they have four adult daughters. He has subsequently dedicated his time and considerable fortune to Catholic philanthropy and conservative political causes. A champion of the right to life, Monaghan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on philanthropy and activism, which has garnered both admiration and criticism. There is speculation that he is planning a broad fundraising campaign for the Catholic Church in America.

Early life and business career

After his father died, Monaghan's mother had difficulties as a single mother, and Monaghan ended up in St. Joseph Home for Children in Jackson, Michigan, conducted by the Felician Sisters of Livonia. The nuns there inspired his devotion to the Catholic faith and he eventually entered a minor seminary, with the desire to eventually become a priest. He was eventually expelled from the seminary for a series of disciplinary infractions.

Domino's Pizza

Monaghan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1956 and received an honorable discharge in 1959. He then returned to Ann Arbor and enrolled in the University of Michigan, intending to become an architect. While still a student, he and his brother James borrowed $500 to purchase a small pizza store called DomiNick's in Ypsilanti, Michigan. This business would grow into Domino's Pizza.

Detroit Tigers owner

In 1983, Monaghan bought the Detroit Tigers, who won the World Series a year later. He became close to Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who remains a close friend, business associate and participant in his many philanthropic works. Monaghan ultimately sold the Tigers to his competitor Mike Ilitch of Little Caesar's Pizza in 1992. Combining his passion for pizza and baseball, his 1986 autobiography was titled Pizza Tiger.

Other business pursuits

Monaghan is a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, and the Domino's headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan strongly resembles Wright's Prairie School architecture adapted to a larger scale. He was one of the foremost collectors of Wright artifacts, including a dining room table and chairs for which he paid $1.6 million. He even purchased a portion of Drummond Island in Michigan, where he created a private resort complex featuring buildings designed in the style of Wright.

Another of Monaghan's expensive passions was automobiles, and for a time his collection included one of the world's six Bugatti Royales, for which he paid $8 million.

Religious awakening

After reading Mere Christianity by Christian author C.S. Lewis in 1989, Monaghan was shaken by what he considered his sinful pride and ego. He took two years off from Domino's to examine his life and explore religious goals.

Despite his enormous wealth, Monaghan divested himself of most of his ostentatious material possessions. He gave up his lavish office suite at Domino's headquarters, replete with leather-tiled floors and an array of expensive Wright furnishings, turning it into a corporate reception room. He also ceased construction on a huge Wright-inspired mansion that was to be his home. (The house remains half-finished.) He also built a mission in a Honduras mountain town, and funded and supervised the construction of a new cathedral in Managua, Nicaragua, after the old cathedral was destroyed in an earthquake.

He returned to Domino's in 1991 after its fortunes worsened and the company bounced right back. He infuriated the National Organization for Women (NOW) by donating to pro-life causes. NOW called for a boycott of Domino's, but it is unclear what effect, if any, that had on the company's sales. Domino's spokeswoman Holly Ryan said the company has posted record sales every year it had been in business. Monaghan sold his controlling stake in Domino's Pizza in 1998 to Bain Capital, an investment firm based in Boston, for an estimated $1 billion, stepping away from a pizza empire he grew from a single shop to about 6,100.

Philanthropy

NOTE: This section contains biased wording that needs to be cleaned-up

Monaghan is a conservative Republican Catholic with a particular interest in advocating for the right to life and for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion via privacy concerns. In 1983 he established the Mater Christi Foundation, today the Ave Maria Foundation The Ave Maria Foundation. It is a private foundation formed to focus on Catholic education, Catholic media, community projects and other Catholic charities.

He helped form Legatus Legatus, an organization of high-profile Catholic business leaders to promote the ideals of the Church in society. The name was taken from the Latin meaning "ambassador". Legatus was to serve as a spiritual resource and social community for those Catholics who stand at the helm of America's entrepreneurial ship. The idea came after he received holy communion from Pope John Paul II in his private papal chapel at the Vatican in 1987. Today there are 34 chapters in the U.S. and Canada which encompasses nearly 1,500 members who represent over 750 major firms.

That Vatican visit moved him so much he returned to the United States committed to promoting the Catholic faith. He soon established Ave Maria Radio Ave Maria Radio, the Ave Maria List Ave Maria List pro-life political action committee, and the Thomas More Law Center The Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm focused on defending the rights of Christians. The foundation donates resources to help alleviate poverty in Central and South America. In addition, his foundation established the Spritus Sanctus Academies The Spiritus Sanctus Academies. These elementary schools are administered by the newly established community of nuns, the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist The Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist. This thriving order of teaching sisters has benefited from Monaghan's philanthropy, and has so many new young nuns that it had to double the size of its convent almost immediately.

The Ave Maria Foundation has subsequently fine-tuned its focus to higher education, and has established both a university and a law school. Along with that change in focus, many of the other non-profit entities that the Ave Maria Foundation established have become independent or are in the process of being weaned off of Ave Maria Foundation grants. This narrowing of focus and the recent geographic re-allignment to Florida (see below) have ignited no small amount of controversy among those who share his religious convictions.

The Ave Maria School of Law The Ave Maria School of Law, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened its doors in 2000, and received full accreditation from the American Bar Association in 2005, the earliest possible date under ABA rules. The school was a dream of several professors from the University of Detroit Mercy, who publicly left that institution when it allowed several pro-abortion rights members of the Michigan Supreme Court to appear at the school's annual "Red Mass." Professors Stephen Safranek, Mollie Murphy, Richard Myers and Joseph Falvey, setting out to form a new orthodox Catholic law school, presented their idea to Monaghan (who had previously been a strong supporter of opening a new law school at Franciscan University) to provide significant funding through his Ave Maria Foundation. Together they enlisted Bernard Dobranski, Dean at Catholic University's law school and former Dean of Detroit Mercy's Law School, to lead up the new school as Dean. Monaghan would serve as president of the school's board of governors.

Faculty members include noted conservative legal scholar and controversial Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia assisted in developing the school's curriculum, and the school's first annual Ave Maria Lecture was presented by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1999. The school's stated goal is to educate competent moral attorneys who will influence all aspects of the legal profession and advance natural law theory.

In order to get his dream of a new Catholic University off the ground, Monaghan founded a college in Ypsilanti, Michigan,Ave Maria College Ave Maria College. In various attempts to accelerate accreditation, Monaghan acquired St. Mary's College of Orchard Lake and a campus in Nicaragua, renamed Ave Maria College of the Americas. Both experienced dramatic changes in leadership and direction under Monaghan's influence.

St. Mary's College was sold and is now under the auspices of nearby Madonna University. The College in Ypsilanti, against faculty and student protests, is in the process of "winding down" in preparation for a 2007 closure. Although the college continues to operate in Ypsilanti as promised through the 2006/2007 academic year, the current president of Ave Maria College has told studenùts that graduating from Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti will mean receiving a substandard educational experience. To date, alternative funding has not been secured to prevent the school's closure.

The orchestral Ave Maria Mass (see^*) Ave Maria Mass at AquinasAndMore.com, by composer Stephen Edwards, was comminssioned by Monaghan "to express in music the spiritual commitment behind the founding of Ave Maria College and Ave Maria School of Law." This mass has now been dedicated by the composer to the victims of September 11.

Monaghan publicly promotes daily attendance at Mass, daily recitation of the Rosary and frequent sacramental confession. He has also committed to spending what remains of his $1 billion fortune on philanthropic endeavors.

Vatican connection

The elevation of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 has raised the profile of Father Joseph Fessio, the Jesuit provost of Monaghan's Ave Maria University. Fessio received his PhD in theology under the mentorship of Ratzinger while the future pope was a professor at the University of Regensburg. Fessio has remained close to Ratzinger, and the publishing house Fessio founded, Ignatius Press, has been and remains the exclusive English-language publisher of all of Ratzinger's personal works prior to his election as pope. Father Fessio's conservative views have been a source of controversy within the Jesuit order, but his close relationship with the new pope is seen by many as being very beneficial to the new university's success.

Morally Responsible Investing

Monaghan also helped to establish the financially successful Ave Maria Mutual Funds by asking friend George P. Schwartz of Schwartz Investment Counsel, Inc. to launch the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund in May 2001. It is described as a morally responsible mutual fund that is available to individual investors with a $1,000 minimum investment. The Ave Maria Mutual Funds have grown to four in number. He is a member of the Catholic Advisory Board to the funds, which sets the religious criteria that keeps certain stocks out of the company's fund portfolios. Involvement with contraception, non-marital partner employee benefits, pornography and abortion are some of those criteria.

Ave Maria, Florida

Monaghan had originally sought to establish the Ave Maria University Ave Maria University in Ann Arbor, at Domino's Farms, the large corporate office park that he owned and leased to Domino's Pizza. Local officials refused to approve the zoning change, forcing him to look elsewhere for a site. Eventually community leaders in Collier County, Florida, offered him a large site thirty miles east of Naples, Florida to develop the university.

In February 2006, ground was broken for the new university and town, Ave Maria, Florida Ave Maria, Florida. Monaghan controls all commercial real estate in the town, and plans to build 11,000 homes in the town, an oratory, and several businesses. Monaghan has said that any pharmacies doing business in the town will not be allowed to sell contraceptives, a statement which has drawn fire from the ACLU (see^*) "Halfway to Heaven: A Catholic millionaire's dream town draws fire", Newsweek, February 27, 2006.

References

External links

^* Daily Catholic: This "Pizza Tiger" Has Put His Fortunes Behind a Domino Effect in the Church Back Towards Orthodoxy With His New Ave Maria Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan
^* Article about Ave Maria
^* Major Private Gifts to Higher Education Since 1967
^* Pizza-empire founder is giving away his fortune to Catholic causes
^* Ave Maria Mutual Funds

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