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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 Childrenin 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 (starting a pillow fight, talking in study hall, arriving late for chapel, etc.). 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 Royale s, 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 funded and supervised the construction of a church in Nicaragua and built a mission in a Honduras mountain town. 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, allegedly including Operation Rescue . 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 Monaghan is a Conservative Republican Catholic with a particular interest in advocating for the right to life of the unborn 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 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 all the pope was advocating. He soon established 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 in 2005, the earliest possible date under ABA rules. The school was the brainchild 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, recruited Monaghan and the Ave Maria Foundation to provide significant funding. Faculty members include noted conservative legal scholar and controversial Supreme Court nominee Judge writer and scholar from its governing Board. In order to get his dream of a new Catholic University off the ground, Monaghan founded a college in Ypsilanti, Michigan, 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 abandoned 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 preperation for a 2007 closure, after which all proceeds from the sale of the property and resources will be used to further construction in Florida. Despite repeated promises Ave Parents by Monaghan to continue academic programs in Ypsilanti through the 2006/2007 academic year, the current president of Ave Maria College has told students that graduating from Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti will mean receiving a substandard educational experience. While the college had suffered many setbacks before announcement of its closure, termination of funding stripped it of any chance at prospering. It is speculated that despite the remarkable success of Ave Maria School Of Law , an independent institition, Monaghan likewise desires to shutter the doors and move it to Florida as well. Monaghan has stated that his vision for his utopian Florida university does include a law school. Notably, no law school has ever been "moved" such a distance, yet Monaghan persists, deaf to the protests of the faculty, students, alumni, and even the many Ann Arbor businesses that would be devasted by closure. It has been speculated that Monaghan has been systematically replacing dissident members of the school's Board of Governors with those more sympathic to his own point of view, a course of action similar to that pursued at Ave Maria College. The orchestral ''Ave Maria Mass'' 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 Cardinal Joseph 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 , 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, , 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 "Halfway to Heaven: A Catholic millionaire's dream town draws fire" , ''Newsweek'', February 27, 2006. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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