When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet asked wealthy people to give at least half of their money away to charity last week, one of the men they contacted was Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza.  Worth nearly half a billion dollars, Monaghan was in a Catholic orphanage as a child, and had once wanted to become a priest.  When that dream couldn’t be realized, he bought a pizza shop to help finance his college education.  Soon he was working so much, he couldn’t finish school.  Over the years, he came to own luxuries from homes, cars, and jets to the Major League Baseball team, the Detroit Tigers.  But he decided to give most of his wealth away and “die broke,” because – as he writes in his “Giving Pledge” letter – “I came into this world penniless and as a Catholic Christian, (and) I know that I cannot take any of it with me.”  (To read his full letter, click here.)

Monaghan decided to use his fortune to found his own Catholic school.  Ave Maria University now sits in Ave Maria, Florida, on the southwest coast of the state near Naples.  Both a community and a university, Ave Maria aims to teach the Catholic educators of tomorrow more about the faith that was so influential to Tom as a child.  You can learn more about Ave Maria here.  In a continued effort to give back, Monaghan now spends much time raising funds for Ave Maria, which also includes a Law School. His hope? That the educators of tomorrow will be armed with the knowledge of a deep faith he gained early on, from the Polish Felician Sisters in that Michigan orphanage, long ago.