Famous Catholics in Business & Activism

Frank J. Hanna III is an American entrepreneur, merchant banker and philanthropist. He was one of three entrepreneurs profiled in the Acton Institute and PBS documentary film The Call of the Entrepreneur.[1]

Hanna has been described as "one of the leading Catholic philanthropists in the USA."

Frank J. Hanna is CEO of Hanna Capital in Atlanta, Georgia. He invests as a merchant banker in technology and financial services, and has started and sold a number of businesses over the last thirty-one years. Prior to going into the investment business, he was a corporate attorney. He is featured in the PBS documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur.

Mr. Hanna has been involved in education for the last 37 years. He has been instrumental in the foundation of thirteen new educational institutions, from preschool through post-secondary. He served as Chair of a Commission on Education Excellence under President George W. Bush.

He has been a frequent speaker to various groups and mass media regarding macroeconomics, education, and philanthropy. He is the author of two best-selling books: What Your Money Means, and A Graduate’s Guide to Life.

He currently serves on and advises the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, both within the Catholic Church, and in the secular world, including EWTN, the Acton Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Hanna is the founder of the Solidarity Association. Of most significance, the Solidarity Association serves as Trustee of the Mater Verbi/Hanna Papyrus Trust, which safeguards in the Vatican Apostolic Library the oldest copy of the Gospel of Luke (and the oldest copy of the Lord’s Prayer) in the world.

In recognition of his charitable efforts, Mr. Hanna has received the William B. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership, and the David R. Jones Award for Philanthropic Leadership. He is also a Knight of Malta, of the Holy Sepulchre, and was named a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St Gregory by Pope Benedict XVI.

Frank J. Hanna is CEO of Hanna Capital in Atlanta, Georgia. He invests as a merchant banker in technology and financial services, and has started and sold a number of businesses over the last twenty-five years. Prior to going into the investment business, he was a corporate attorney. He is featured in the PBS documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur.

Mr. Hanna has been involved in education for the last 32 years. He has been instrumental in the foundation of eight Catholic educational institutions, including four schools in Atlanta. 
He has been a frequent speaker to various groups and mass media regarding the ethics of business. He has often spoken on philanthropy, and has written a best-selling book entitled, What Your Money Means.

During the administration of George W. Bush, Mr. Hanna was appointed and served as the Chair of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He currently serves on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, both within the Church, and in the secular world, including the Papal Foundation, EWTN, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Hanna is the founder of the Solidarity Association. Of most significance, the Solidarity Association serves as Trustee of the Mater Verbi/Hanna Papyrus Trust, which safeguards in the Vatican Apostolic Library the oldest copy of the Gospel of Luke (and the oldest copy of the Lord’s Prayer) in the world.

In recognition of his charitable efforts, Mr. Hanna has received the William B. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership, and the David R. Jones Award for Philanthropic Leadership. He is also a Knight of Malta, of the Holy Sepulchre, and was named a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St Gregory by Pope Benedict XVI.

Marjorie Jones Dannenfelser is the president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an American political organization that seeks to advance anti-abortion women in politics.[2] She was brought into the organization as its executive director in 1993, shortly after its founding by Rachel MacNair.

Pro-abortion rights as a college student, Marjorie Jones was the "pro-choice chair" of the Duke UniversityCollege Republicans. But a summer spent in a house for interns at The Heritage Foundation changed that, when "group-house drama erupted over what Dannenfelser called an "inappropriate" video." This dispute led to her conversion to Catholicism and a new anti-abortion stance, according to a 2010 Washington Postprofile.[1] After graduating Duke, Dannenfelser worked for the Ronald Reagan administration.[4]

In the 1990s, Dannenfelser was the staff director of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus,[2] and worked for U.S. House Representative Alan Mollohan (D-WV), whom the SBA List later worked to defeat in the 2010 Democratic primary.[1][5] Mollohan was defeated in the primary by Mike Oliverio.

Dannenfelser re-organized the Susan B. Anthony List in 1997 after SBA List founder Rachel MacNair brought her on board as the first experienced political activist to join the group.[3][6] Soon afterwards, Dannenfelser was joined by Jane Abraham to turn the SBA List away from MacNair's bipartisan and liberal credo, moving to a  Republican Party and conservative-oriented group.[7] Dannenfelser and Abrahama led SBA List until 2006, when Dannenfelser assumed both the chairman and president positions. The organization, headquartered in Washington, D. C., lobbies law-makers, and spends millions of dollars per year supporting candidates.

Dannenfelser endorsed the unsuccessful John McCain 2008 presidential campaign.[8] She supported McCain's running mate Sarah Palin, an anti-abortion politician,[9] noting that McCain alone did not engage the "disaffected" pro-life voter bloc.[10][11] Dannenfelser called Palin the "poster child" for the anti-abortion cause,[10] though she later said Palin became a "great disappointment."[12] In September 2016, Dannenfelser became Donald Trump's campaign "Pro-Life Coalition" leader.

Marjorie Jones was born and raised in Greenville, North Carolina.[14] She grew up as an Episcopalian, and attended Duke University. She married Martin Dannenfelser who later served as vice president of the evangelical political activist group Family Research Council.[8] They had both worked as Congressional aides in 1990.[15] The two live in Arlington, Virginia, where they raised five children.

Marjorie Dannenfelser met Catholics before becoming pro-life, but, like the others, said that “Catholics led me to become Catholic.” They were also key, she said, to her pro-life conversion.

Raised in an Episcopalian family in North Carolina, Dannenfelser said she met Catholics for the first time during a D.C. internship while studying at Duke University.

“I met a whole group of just kind, smart, faithful Catholics who so loved their faith that it just, it inspired me,” the 57-year-old pro-life leader remembered.

Among other things, she embraced the intellectual depth of the Faith and the openness of these Catholics to debate and engage in conversations about apologetics.

She entered the Catholic Church in 1989 at Pentecost. It happened shortly after she became pro-life.

“I thought it was really smart, but my position was so shallow … it basically boiled down to ‘My body, my choice,'” she remembered as a philosophy major.

“I could have fooled myself forever. I was engaged in the [pro-abortion] argument a lot, and I lost — which was the best gain I’ve ever had.”
— Marjorie Dannenfelser

“It just became super obvious that I had been satisfied with staying in the shallows and not going deep because I was afraid of myself and because I was afraid — because I would have gotten an abortion myself, and because I didn’t want to be one of those [pro-life] people,” she said.

Looking back now, she said, the Holy Spirit guided her arguments going back and forth on abortion.

Marjorie Dannenfelser speaks during the annual 2020 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. OSV News photo/CNS file, Tyler Orsburn

“I could have fooled myself forever,” she said. “I was engaged in the argument a lot, and I lost — which was the best gain I’ve ever had.”

Two arguments in particular resonated with her: “I really could not satisfactorily answer the question, ‘What is that thing? The object of the abortion, what is it?'” she said. And, then: “‘What if I’m wrong [supporting abortion]?’ The consequences of being right aren’t terrible, but the consequences of being wrong are eternal and damaging.”

Today, the mother of five lives in Arlington, Virginia, and leads the nation’s largest grassroots pro-life political organization, including a nationwide network of more than 900,000 pro-life Americans.

Dannenfelser looked back to the time when she sat in the back of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill as an Episcopalian working at the nearby Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and educational institution.

“I didn’t have any desire to work in the pro-life movement at this point,” she said, “but my views certainly changed.”

Larry is the retired CEO of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which led a revolution in North American coffee consumption with the Keurig Single Serve Brewing System. Larry retired in 2013, after nearly six years leading the company, and after a 37-year career in various positions of leadership across seven public companies, beginning with Procter & Gamble and including PPG Industries, Inc., John’s Manville Corporation, Maytag Corporation, and Royal Philips, NV. Prior to Green Mountain, Larry was CEO of The Royal Group, Inc., a Canadian building products firm.

Since retiring, he has invested his time and energy working on boards to support for profit and non-profit enterprises. Most notably, he is Chairman of the Board’s Audit Committee for Steelcase, Inc., and serves on the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America, the Board of Governors of Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and the Board of Governors for Ave Maria School of Law.

Larry was born in Dayton, Ohio, received a BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati in 1977, an MBA from Xavier University in 1984, and completed the Advance Management Program at Harvard University in 2000. He and his spouse, Lynn, married 36 years, have two adult children and two grandchildren.

From a regional coffee company to a major international player, Green Mountain Coffee has erupted into the global marketplace thanks to its past president and CEO, Larry Blanford. A lifelong Catholic, Blanford recently visited Benedictine College and spoke to the Gregorian Fellows about his leadership experience and business advice. Here are our top quotes from his talk:

1.  “Professionally, I am thankful for my Midwestern roots, Catholic education, upbringing and early career development. They are the core of any success I have had or will have in the future.”

2.  “My first important message here today is: When conducted by skilled and well-formed people, people from Benedictine, business is truly a vocation. Business contributes to God’s work of creation.”

3. “When you are using your talents to let other use their holiness, you are becoming a saint, which as Matthew Kelly says is just stacking up moments of holiness. You have that opportunity in business every day, perhaps every few minutes.”

4.  “Catholic Social Thought has a lot on business, often referencing the encyclical Rerum Novarum … Another encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno … calls for reconstruction of society based on the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.”

5.  “Communism fell because of its totalitarian nature and its neglect of the soul.”

6.  “The power of productivity and improved productivity through efficiency … or innovation … is the best way to improve the standard of living.”

7.  “Business is a vocation centered in Christ.”

8.  “God is the ultimate creator, and man is a creature composed of body and soul made in the image and likeness of God. So it is natural we have a calling to create as he did. …  When practiced as God intends, business is a hugely creative process with far-reaching positive impact. Business can lift people – and the world – out of poverty.”

9.  “Many young people think that you have to check your faith at the door in the workplace. Not true. While you do not necessarily wear your faith on your sleeve, you draw on your faith in your interactions with every person.”

10.  “Business is about building economic prosperity and spiritual prosperity. Whenever your head and your heart are aligned, that is a very powerful position to be in.”

Growing up, Kristan Hawkins said she only knew lukewarm Catholics. She met a different kind of Catholic when she began Students for Life of America in Washington, D.C.

The 37-year-old pro-life leader remembered placing the first job ads for her group.

“All I could pay was basically commission and expenses,” she said. “The only people that really would apply to my crazy job ad were these … very well-formed Catholics who knew their faith.”

That encounter, she said, began her own journey as a non-denominational Christian to the Catholic faith.

“I think my conversion story, it’s fairly simple,” she said. “It’s meeting other Catholic leaders within the movement, talking with staff members over the years, and just really hearing the truth about our faith.”

“I think my conversion story, it’s fairly simple. It’s meeting other Catholic leaders within the movement, talking with staff members over the years, and just really hearing the truth about our faith.”
— Kristan Hawkins

“It was absolutely the pro-life movement,” she concluded, “that led me to the Church.”

She entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2015.

Kristan Hawkins is shown with her husband and four children. Courtesy of Students for Life of America

Today, Hawkins leads a team that serves 1,400 pro-life student groups on middle, high school, college, university, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Combined, they contribute more than $21 million in in-kind volunteer services to women and families every year, SFLA estimates.

While speaking at colleges and universities nationwide, Hawkins lives in various states as she travels across the country in a camper with her husband and their four home-schooled children.

Hawkins’ pro-life work began as a teenager. At 15 years old, she interned at her local pregnancy center at the invitation of a woman from her church. While there, she trained as a counselor — and worked alongside Catholics.

“It was a pregnancy resource center run by mostly all Catholics, families of basically Franciscan University,” Hawkins said, referring to the Catholic university in Steubenville, Ohio. “That’s where I would say I actually became pro-life.”

Faith drives Sean Fieler, a conservative Catholic donor and strategist, to seek to shape some of the most controversial cultural issues of the day — abortion, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ rights. 

The hedge-fund manager, who has donated more than $40 million to charitable causes, has had successes supporting groups that worked to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that guaranteed the right to abortion. 

A recent Guardian article revealed that a menstruation-tracking app called Femm, downloaded by over 400,000 users across the world, is funded by major anti-abortion donor Sean Fieler. 

The app, which also features reproductive health advice from unlicensed “medical experts”, encourages users to avoid hormonal birth control in favor of “natural” birth control methods.

Fieler is a General Partner at Equinox Management Partners LP, a hedge fund based in Princeton, New Jersey. According to his online bios, he also sits on the boards of a number of conservative think tanks and anti-abortion organizations, most notably the Manhattan Institute, the Acton Institute, and the  Susan B. Anthony List. 

According to a ReWire investigation, Fieler gave over $18 million between 2010 and 2014 to anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, and pro-theocracy candidates. Notably, he’s made donations totaling over $500,000 to the Susan B. Anthony List-affiliated Women Speak Out PAC, and over $1.5 million to Campaign for American Principles. Other notable funders to these two PACs include the Mercer family (see here and here).

The Guardian article states:

Femm receives much of its income from private donors including the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a charity backed almost exclusively by Sean Fieler, a wealthy Catholic hedge-funder based in New York…
The Chiaroscuro Foundation, with Fieler as its chairman and main backer, provided $1.79m to the developers of the Femm app over the last three years, according to IRS statements. Fieler also sits on the board of directors for the Femm Foundation, a not-for-profit which operates the app...
According to the Femm Foundation’s annual reports, it received $618,653 in donations in 2017. The same year, Chiaroscuro gave Femm $445,500, the majority of its budget. Chiaroscuro gave an additional $350,000 in 2016, and $1m in 2015.

Here’s a LittleSis map of Fieler’s ties:

As state anti-abortion bills continue to grow in number across the country, it’s critical to keep an eye on mega-donors like Feiler who are finding new ways to push their ideological agendas. Femm App is a particularly disturbing example of how the anti-abortion movement is developing technology that not only collects data about users fertility cycles, but pushes an anti-contraceptive agenda under the guise of reproductive health.

Raised in an evangelical Protestant family, Lila Rose first questioned her faith in high school.

“Was I even a Christian?” the 34-year-old pro-life leader remembered thinking. “I kind of had to rebuild my own understanding of faith by doing my own research.”

As a college student at University of California, Los Angeles, she explored various faith communities. But, she said, they left many of her theological questions unanswered.

That changed when she met Catholics at her university.

“After some more study and after just a matter of time, when I came to realize what the Eucharist was and came to see that this is the Church that Christ founded 2,000 years ago, I was just like, ‘Let me in. Let me in as soon as possible.'”
— Lila Rose

Rose encountered Catholics through the college chapter of her pro-life group, Live Action, she said. They, in turn, connected her with a local Catholic women’s center.

“After some more study, and after just a matter of time, when I came to realize what the Eucharist was and came to see that this is the Church that Christ founded 2,000 years ago,” Rose described, “I was just like, ‘Let me in. Let me in as soon as possible.'”

She entered the Catholic Church in 2009.

Today, Rose lives in Southern California with her husband and two sons while leading Live Action, a nonprofit perhaps best known for releasing undercover investigative videos of the abortion industry. The group boasts the largest online presence in the pro-life movement, with content that reaches millions each month.

Rose remembered realizing the destruction of abortion as a 9-year-old girl after she came across a book called “The Handbook on Abortion,” by Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke, she said. She opened its pages to find images of fetal development — and victims of abortion.

Those images, she said, convinced her that abortion was a crime against humanity.

“The more I learned about it, the more I wanted to do something about it,” she stressed.

With a former Presbyterian minister as his father, David Bereit grew up attending church every Sunday. His first encounter with Catholicism came as a Boy Scout.

The local Catholic parish sponsored his scout troop, the 54-year-old pro-life leader said, and held an annual “Scout Sunday Mass.” The kneeling and standing left him confused, he remembered.

Then, while studying at Texas A&M University, he met Margaret.

“When we went on our first date to go out to lunch together, she was sharing with me just her passion for her Catholic faith,” he said of the woman he described as catching his eye and heart.

At the end of their lunch, she invited him to Sunday Mass. Seeing an opportunity for a second date, he said yes. He has attended Mass with her every Sunday since.

“In this journey, God’s given us this rich blessing of the transformational aspect of our Catholicism. And we just feel like, the rest of our lives, we want to share that with anybody and everybody we possibly can.”
— David Bereit

His conversion was not immediate, he said. It came nearly 26 years into their 30 years of marriage.

Bereit identified a “huge piece” that accelerated him along his journey: getting involved in the pro-life movement, initially by running the local pro-life group in College Station, Texas. While there, he led the first local 40 Days for Life campaign, he said, as well as started up 40 Days for Life as its own independent entity.

He described 40 Days for Life — a campaign that aims to end abortion through prayer and fasting, community outreach and a vigil outside of abortion clinics — as a type of Catholic immersion.

“More than 80% of the participants in 40 Days for Life were Catholic,” he said. “I was praying with people who were praying the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplets outside abortion centers and meeting bishops and priests and religious sisters.”

When he stepped away in 2016 to start something new, he turned to God for help.

“I finally was just driven to my knees to say, ‘God, what do you want?'” he said. “It was during that season that I ended up in an hour of adoration, feeling the call to start RCIA.”

He entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2018, with Margaret as his confirmation sponsor.

“It’s been an unbelievable journey, and I look back and I see not only does God continue to draw me closer to him, but also my wife and eventual children that helped me to see the Faith lived out,” he said. “And then all these faithful people in the pro-life movement, including many … converts, that helped me to kind of see the beauty and richness of the Faith and not as an abandonment of where I’d come from but as the next step in my spiritual journey.”

Located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Bereit now serves as a strategic adviser for pro-life and faith-based groups. He also works as a leadership mentor and pro-life speaker.

Bereit remembers first paying attention to abortion while in college. While he never supported abortion, he was, as he put it, “passively pro-life.” That changed when Planned Parenthood decided to open an abortion clinic nearby.

When Bereit looks back on his life, he said, he considers his family “very blessed.”

Even when he and his wife struggled with infertility, he said, that helped them to grow in their understanding of Pope St. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Today, they have two kids: a daughter who joined the Nashville Dominicans and a son studying at George Mason University, where he helps lead the Catholic campus ministry.

Together, Bereit and his wife remain active in faith circles, including by serving as marriage mentors for Catholic and mixed-faith couples.

“In this journey, God’s given us this rich blessing of the transformational aspect of our Catholicism,” he said. “And we just feel like, the rest of our lives, we want to share that with anybody and everybody we possibly can.”

Tony Maas begins every day with an hour of reflecting on Scripture readings, journaling and asking our Lord to direct his steps.

Maas is president and chief executive officer of JTM Food Group in Harrison. The company earned $165 million in 2016. Maas insists the meetings at one of the nation’s largest food manufacturers employing 475, start with a prayer.

The company’s success is evident with a $26.1 million expansion of its Harrison facility with a groundbreaking in January. Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr blessed the site. Maas invited him.

“This is the first time I’ve done this,” Archbishop Schnurr said. “Tony is a man of deep, deep faith.” He commits this company — the profits of this company — to further the teachings of Christ. That’s pretty impressive.”

Maas wears his faith on his sleeve. He promotes his Right-to-Life commitment with ads on the back of company trucks. The company provides significant financial assistance to The Athenaeum of Ohio housing Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West and the archdiocese’s graduate school of theology.

The company founded and funds The Underground in Forest Park, Ruah Woods in Green Township and BLOC Ministries in Westwood — all Catholic faith-centered ministries.

“I’ve been blessed to be brought up in a Catholic family,” Maas said. “We were blessed to grow up and have a little butcher shop and my grandfather worked with us every day. That was in Delhi Township. I went to Our Lady of Victory and Elder (High School)and I learned all the principles of the faith: the only thing that matters is the salvation of souls and your own would be part parcel of that. The greatest gift we’ve got in life is being Catholic.”

“I had a significant experience in 1996 when I went to a Cursillo (a movement dedicated to spreading the word of God and helping people form a closer relationship with Jesus)… I thought I was in really great shape. I was a good, faithful guy with wife and kids and I went to church all the time and worked in charitable work with pro-life stuff mainly…. I learned at Cursillo that I had a long way to go.” Maas said.

“I learned emphatically that the Holy Spirit is in my life and that drove me to do a lot of different things… The most profound thing … was to spend a part of every day for the rest of my life in communion with the Lord and first starting with reading a daily Scripture and reflecting and journaling and praying so at this point I have not missed a day since October, 1996.

“Once you are real with the Lord,…there’s nothing done in secret. He knows all… I did not want to have any private agendas. You can’t separate your life when you’re truly walking with the Lord. There’s not a separation in life — being a husband, being a dad, being a businessman, being a friend in the community. No matter what you’re doing, if you’re dedicating your life to Jesus and His church — which I am trying to do — you would put that on everything you’re doing. You have to really try hard to make your life an open book. It’s extremely important and by doing it, God has blessed us immensely.”

“Having pictures of babies on the backs of our trucks, being transparent about our organization that prays before meetings, we acknowledge God in everything we do,” Maas said.

“JTM is my number one ministry. Without it being successful, I can’t do anything else… With this new goal of putting up a new manufacturing distribution center, we switched from the idea of a car race to a rocket ship,” Maas said. “It’s for business growth. We are making a decision for 50 years. We are family owned and operated and this decision is being made for the next generation as well as for us, and for our 475 employees, for all of our customers, and certainly for all of the charities that rely upon us. We believe in tithing as well. We’ve tied that to the business from the inception.”

“We started JTM in 1980 with the idea of bringing good, homemade items to restaurants to becoming a federally inspected, processing facility. We came out to Harrison in October 1983.”

“Our biggest business is the school lunch program. We are the number two provider of school lunch foods to the United States. We sell national restaurant chains (and)… national food service distributors. We sell to the military. We sell product overseas to the troops serving abroad and we also still have our retail business.”

With contributions from JTM, three ministries were born. ” We are proactive,” Maas said. “We’re leading these different ministries, and we are really trying to make a difference ± what God has called us directly to do.”

* The Underground: “The underground (is)dedicated to the time St. John Paul came out at the end of the ’90s… (and) was talking about … one resounding theme — a new springtime for Christianity. It was a time for looking to be more ecumenical — working with all Christian brothers and sisters but also looking at the media and looking at what it was doing to culture… St. John Paul made a point that the media wasn’t necessarily bad or good. The motivation came to start our own ministry that would provide good wholesome programming based on Jesus Christ, was pro-life (with)… redeeming issues that young people could grow up in the media and make a difference in some way. We use (the Underground) as an education center for people interested in the media business. How to be hosts, writers, filmmakers, editors. We’ve done this since 2000 actually, and it’s also a nightclub for kids looking for a place to go on Friday and Saturday.”

* Ruah Woods: “We started Ruah Woods in 2007. It is dedicated to the propagation of teaching the theology of the body. That’s very near and dear to us. We believe marriage and family is the rock of society. It’s a huge ministry and we are working closely with the archdiocese… We have been mandated by the archdiocese that the theology of the body be taught in the curriculum program kindergarten through 12th grade. Our team (is) … writing curriculum to promulgate the teaching of the theology of the body.

* BLOC Ministries: The ministry works with those in drug addiction and prostitution.HARRISON, Ohio - It isn’t every day you see a bishop at a groundbreaking.

“No, this is the first time I’ve done this,” Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said after blessing the ground at JTM Food Group’s $26.1 million expansion in Harrison Jan. 7.

He was there because JTM President Tony Maas invited him.

“Tony is a man of deep, deep faith,” Schnurr said. “He commits this company, the profits of this company to further the teachings of Christ. That’s pretty impressive.”

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It’s easy to find evidence of that commitment, from the Right-to-Life ads on the back of company trucks to the $1.4 million in grants awarded to mostly religious charities in the Maas Family Foundation’s 2015 tax return.

Maas calls it a unifier for his 475-employee company, where department meetings often start with a prayer and revenue grew nearly 8 percent to $167 million in 2016.

“Might sound crazy,” Maas said. “But in a lot of ways it’s a ministry to us. It’s a calling, a vocation. We cannot hire people, cannot work with charities and work in the community unless JTM is successful. So, that is a driving force among everyone here.”

Why JTM is not for sale

What started with a Delhi Township butcher shop in 1960 has evolved into a national food-processing company that sells more than 600 menu items to school-lunch programs, military clients, grocery stores and restaurants. It’s a family-owned business that has employed all six of Tony Maas’ siblings and more than a dozen from the next generation.

Its recent groundbreaking will lead to a 193,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution center that will double its production capacity to 185 million pounds of kettle-cooked food. Maas thinks that will ensure 10 years of growth, hundreds of new menu items and about 150 new employees over the next t10 years.

But that’s just fuel for the Maas family flame.

“As far as putting their faith into action, they’re a rare breed,” said Dwight Young, executive director of BLOC Ministries, a West Side nonprofit that’s trying to break the cycle of poverty with tutoring, mentoring, job training and fitness programs.

Young has worked with the Maas family since 1998. They’re among his biggest supporters, financially and in terms of friendship.

Young has watched JTM hire and help families he’s counseled in Cleves and Price Hill. He lost count of the long-term employees he sees every year at the company Christmas party. Tony’s brother, Jerome Maas, serves on BLOC Ministries’ board.

“They just make no bones about it,” Young said. “Their faith is what they do.”

BLOC Ministries ranked 5th among individual grant recipients for the Maas Family Foundation last year. Here are the largest gifts:

Ruah Woods (Catholic retreat center): $405,000
St. John the Baptist Church in Harrison: $125,000
Underground Ministries (Christian music club in Forest Park): $105,000
Athenaeum of Ohio (seminary): $100,000
BLOC Ministries: $82,500

Tony Maas said the family tries to focus its giving on educational causes, Catholic parishes and charities, right-to-life organizations and community-building nonprofits like BLOC Ministries.

Although JTM competes in a consolidating industry in which publicly traded rivals like AdvancePierre Foods are looking for companies to acquire, the Maas family has resolved to remain independent. It wants stable growth that feeds the ministry JTM has become.

“You’ve got to have a common purpose,” he said. “You’ve got to live for something more than yourself. I really believe that’s what creates the uniqueness of what JTM is. Yes, we’re trying to provide a living for all of us. But there’s something greater we can do together.”

Austin Ruse is an American conservative political activist, journalist and author. He is the president of a nonprofit NGO, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), which has been listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[1][2] Through C-FAM and his own writings, Ruse advocates anti-LGBT and anti-abortion conservative positions.

Around the turn of the millennium, he also was a diplomatic attaché of the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.[3] In July 2013, Ruse was identified as a convener of a Groundswell coalition meeting among conservative activists and journalists.[4]

In 2017 Ruse published the book Littlest Suffering Souls: Children Whose Short Lives Point Us to Christ,[5]which profiles three devoutly religious children who died after extended periods of illness.[6] Ruse's second book, Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data was also published in 2017.[7] Ruse's third book --- The Catholic Case for Trump --- was published by Regnery Publishers just prior to the 2020 United States presidential election.[8]

Ruse was a regular contributor to the media outlet Breitbart and was instrumental in encouraging Steve Bannon to get involved with Vatican reporting, which paved the way for the establishment of Breitbart's Rome bureau.[9]

In 2004, Ruse and his wife were awarded the John Paul II Award for Advancing the culture of life from the Institute for the Psychological Sciences.

Austin Ruse has headed the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) since the summer of 1997. Ruse has held the title of President since 2000. Ruse and his team have participated in every major UN social policy negotiation since 1997 including the multi-year negotiations that created the International Criminal Court. He has briefed members of the U.S. House and Senate on U.N. matters, as well as briefing White House and National Security Council staff. Ruse has also briefed senior government officials, journalists, and Church and non-governmental leaders from around the world.

He has appeared on a number of national cable network programs discussing UN and Catholic issues, including news programs on CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, and Fox News. Ruse has published in First Things, Washington Times, National Review Online, Weekly Standard, Human Events, and Touchstone, as well as newspapers around the world. Ruse is a biweekly columnist for TheCatholicThing.org and founder of the foreign affairs blog, TheNewSovereigntists.org. He is a former foreign affairs commentator for EWTN‘s weekly news broadcast The World Over hosted by Raymond Arroyo. He lectures widely on U.N. matters, appearing throughout the U.S., also in Canada, Latin America, the Far East and Europe. Ruse is a founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.   Prior to helping to found C-FAM, Ruse spent many years in magazine publishing including Forbes, Fortune, the Atlantic Monthly and Rolling Stone.

Ruse is a Knight in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Knight in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and is a founding member of the Diplomatic Society of St. Gabriel. He is also a member of Sons of the American Revolution. He holds undergraduate degrees in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Missouri, and an Honorary Doctorate from Franciscan University of Steubenville. 

He is married to the former Cathleen Cleaver, who is senior legal advisor to the Family Research Council. They have two daughters, Lucy and Gigi. They live in the state of Virginia where Ruse’s family first arrived from England in the early 1700’s.

Mark Corallo (born February 8, 1966, is an American political communications and public relations professional, who is the co-founder and co-principal of Corallo Comstock.[2] A Republican, he formed Corallo Media Strategies, a public relations firm.[3] He was the communications director for the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General John Ashcroft,[4] and later became a senior adviser with The Ashcroft Group.

Corallo formed his newest firm with Barbara Comstock, who served as his predecessor as Public Affairs Director at the Department of Justice until 2003,[2]and prior to that, as Republican National Committee opposition research director.[6] Corallo decided to convert his previous one-man shop into a joint operation after conversations with the Hearst Corporation, one of his clients, about hiring additional representation for their matter.[2] Corallo recommended Comstock, who, like Corallo, had assisted the defense team of Scooter Libby. Hearst has hired Corallo and Comstock to support Hearst's attempts to quash a subpoena to compel testimony by two San Francisco Chronicle journalists who broke the story of the BALCO steroids investigation.[2]

From 1996 to 1999, he served as press secretary to U.S. Representative and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Bob Livingston (R-LA), as Livingston was forced to step aside as the incoming speaker of the House in 1998 after admitting an extramarital affa

From 1999 to 2002, Corallo was the Communications Director for the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, taking a leave of absence during the 2000 presidential campaign season to serve as press secretary for Victory 2000, the Republican National Committee's official campaign effort.[3]

Corallo was chief spokesman for U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2002 to 2005, as the Public Affairs Director for the Department of Justice.[4]The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has compiled numerous examples of statements Corallo made during that period which the ACLU believes misrepresent the department's understanding of the USA Patriot Act and which were designed to mislead the press about the scope of Justice Department actions.[9]

Shortly before the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, related to Libby's alleged involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame, Corallo became a part of Karl Rove's "public relations defense team." Corallo spoke to the media on Rove's behalf, and correctly denied reports that Rove was under indictment for his involvement in "Plamegate".[10] Corallo has also attended a fundraiser to raise money for Libby's legal defense fund at the residence of James Carville and Mary Matalin.[11]

In 2007 he was spokesman for possible Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson.[12] He also called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales around the same time.[13]

Corallo quit a public relations advisory role with Blackwater Worldwide in 2006; he said that "they do have a few cowboys" and that some of its executives were "rather disdainful of anything that goes to oversight and due process." Since then he has been a spokesman for Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, a longtime friend whom he calls "a visionary."[14][15]

Corallo was the spokesman for President Donald Trump's private legal team during the investigation into possible collusion between members of Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

Corallo is a veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and is a graduate of Georgetown University (BA). He is married and has four children.

In the April 20, 2016 issue of the Catholic Standard, Corallo wrote:

"While as an alumnus who has watched a once great Catholic university lose its identity, I was not surprised that the Georgetown University student Lecture Fund invited Planned Parenthood President, Cecile Richards, to speak. What was truly bizarre, however, was the insistence of the Lecture Fund – and Georgetown’s administration – that her presence on campus represented a good faith effort to present a discussion of a legitimate social issue in a forum that would represent some level of discourse that you’d expect from one of America’s better universities.  

By all accounts I’ve seen since the event concluded, it was in fact nothing more than a well-orchestrated rally for Planned Parenthood, abortion and free contraceptives.  Even more outrageous was that the chief cheerleader, Richards, was joined by students from the non-sanctioned group H*yas for Choice leading the charge.  

Just about any group of students will give a standing ovation for anything that is free: food, beer, Wi-Fi.  So it’s no surprise that an auditorium of students already primed to rally would be brought to their feet cheering when you announce that one of your greatest accomplishments is providing free contraceptives to people on campus. It used to be students at Georgetown gave a standing ovation when its leadership took a stand for its Catholic identity.  

And to that point, the pro-abortion rally under the guise of university academic discussion has to be as much an embarrassment to the administration of the university and its Jesuit community as it is to anyone who sees through this sham. What should be a further embarrassment to alumni and supporters of our school was that administrators never even bothered to make a clear statement, endorsement or defense of Catholic Church teaching on life issues or the Catholic identity of the school in the run up to this event.    

Let’s face it, the Lecture Fund at Georgetown University invited the President of Planned Parenthood because many, many people on campus, students, professors and members of the administration, support giving Planned Parenthood a forum to proclaim the joys of free contraceptives and the appropriateness of abortion. Secondarily, it wouldn’t surprise me if H*yas for Choice, a group that should not be engaged in University-approved events, was at least complicit in the duping of the administration. 

Even if you accept the premise that the invitation to the head of the largest abortion provider in the country to come to Georgetown’s campus to speak was really just a well-intentioned effort to learn more about the world around us, one would have expected the leadership of the University and also its sponsoring Jesuit community to have made very clear that this is an affront to the identity and purpose of the University and certainly to the Society of Jesus.  

In days past, Georgetown’s leadership made a strong defense of its Catholic values, including banning publication of a pro-abortion rally advertisement in the Hoya. The Catholic Standard was right in pointing out that while Georgetown might not want to take a stand to defend its Catholic identity, it would absolutely have stepped in to bar a student group from inviting a white supremacist or a Holocaust denier or an anti-LGBT organization to campus to speak. But by letting Planned Parenthood – an organization with policies and activities that should be morally odious to a Catholic institution –have full run of the campus for a day, I wonder how long it will before their unspoken limits on free speech come back to haunt them?"

Abby has an amazing story about her career with Planned Parenthood and how her life has since changed.  She is now a pro-life advocate, speaker, and author. 

Despite legal challenges and personal attacks from Planned Parenthood, Abby Johnson has published a new memoir explaining why she left the abortion industry to join the ranks of the pro-life movement. Going even further, she's also rejected contraception, and decided to enter the Catholic Church. 

Johnson's new book, “UnPlanned,” hit stores on Jan. 11, 2011, one day after the Texas-based activist addressed more than 20,000 listeners in an online broadcast. The Catholic publisher Ignatius Press has released a special edition of the book, with extra material including a foreword by Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests For Life. 

In the webcast, Johnson explained how she became involved in the abortion industry, despite her strongly Christian upbringing. She found Planned Parenthood's booth at a job fair, she said, and embraced the group's rhetoric about reducing the rate of abortion while making it available as an matter of “personal choice.” 

But through her experiences at Planned Parenthood, first as a volunteer and eventually as a clinic director, Johnson came to see the organization quite differently. As a business, Johnson said, Planned Parenthood was primarily focused on providing its most profitable service –abortion– as often as possible.

Prior to the birth of her own first child, Johnson also had two abortions herself– something she had not discussed openly until the Jan. 10 webcast, although her former friend and Planned Parenthood colleague Laura Kaminczak had disclosed it to a reporter in January 2010 without her permission. 

As Johnson secretly bore this grief, she also became disillusioned with pressure to meet rising monthly abortion quotas at her clinic. Neither of these factors, however, drove her to reject Planned Parenthood's core ideology about abortion “rights.” 

What finally did, was the experience of seeing an unborn child die before her eyes on an ultrasound monitor. Due to a personnel shortage, she was called in to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion for the first time in September 2009. She was initially disconcerted to note how much the unborn child, after 13 weeks, looked like the image she had seen of her own living daughter while pregnant with her.

The next few minutes changed Johnson's life irrevocably, as she watched the baby –whom she had believed to be incapable of feeling anything– squirming and twisting to avoid the tube into which it would be vacuumed. 

“For the briefest moment,” she writes in her memoir, “the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes.” 

“The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone.”

Although Planned Parenthood has denied that this abortion ever took place, their assertion conflicts with other comments from Laura Kaminczak, who said she spoke with Johnson shortly after it occurred. 

Shocked by what she had seen, Johnson still initially continued her work running the clinic and promoting its work. Just a few weeks later, however, she was in the nearby office of the Coalition For Life, telling its director Shawn Carney –with whom she was well-acquainted, from his years of opposition to Planned Parenthood–  that she could no longer continue helping women have abortions.
 

In an interview with CNA on Jan. 11, Johnson said she joined the pro-life movement to help women understand the truth about abortion, not to become a public figure. She explained that it was Planned Parenthood, not the Coalition For Life, that turned her departure into a public battle. 

The organization preemptively sought a court order that would have prevented Johnson from discussing her past work. Because of the legal battle that ensued, she was not previously able to speak about many aspects of Planned Parenthood's business model and its treatment of women. Much of the information in “UnPlanned” is reaching the public only because Planned Parenthood's lawsuit failed.

Johnson said that although she wanted to spare her family the strain of attention and controversy, Planned Parenthood's efforts to silence her ultimately fueled her resolve to come forward. She stated that her critics –some of whom have attempted to question the sincerity of her new-found pro-life convictions–  don't realize that she never wanted the publicity and personal exposure of her new role. 

“Planned Parenthood released this to the media” in late 2009, she said. “Planned Parenthood made this a news story. This is something that they did.”

“This is not what I planned for my life. But God set this up for me– and it would be the wrong thing, to turn away from something that He has planned for my life.”

It was Abby's strong desire to help women that both led Abby to a career with Planned Parenthood, our nation’s largest abortion provider, and caused her to flee the organization and become an outspoken advocate for the pro-life movement. During her eight years with Planned Parenthood, Abby quickly rose in the organization’s ranks and became a clinic director. She was increasingly disturbed by what she witnessed. Abortion was a product Planned Parenthood was selling, not an unfortunate necessity that they fought to decrease. Still, Abby loved the women that entered her clinic and her fellow workers. Despite a growing unrest within her, she stayed on and strove to serve women in crisis. All of that changed on September 26, 2009 when Abby was asked to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion.

She watched in horror as a 13 week baby fought, and ultimately lost, its life at the hand of the abortionist.
At that moment, the full realization of what abortion was and what she had dedicated her life to washed over Abby and a dramatic transformation took place. Desperate and confused, Abby sought help from a local pro-life group. She swore that she would begin to advocate for life in the womb and expose abortion for what it truly is.

Planned Parenthood did not take Abby’s exodus sitting down. They are fully aware that the workers who leave are their greatest threat. Instantly, they took action to silence Abby with a gag order and took her to court. The lawsuit was quickly seen as the sham it was and thrown out of court.  The media was, and continues to be, intensely interested in Abby’s story as well as her continued efforts to advocate for the unborn and help clinic workers escape the abortion industry. She is a frequently requested guest on Fox News and a variety of other shows and the author of the nationally best-selling book, Unplanned, which chronicles both her experiences within Planned Parenthood and her dramatic exit.

Today, Abby travels across the globe sharing her story, educating the public on pro-life issues, advocating for the unborn, and reaching out to abortion clinic staff who still work in the industry. She is the founder of And Then There Were None, a ministry designed to assist abortion clinic workers out of the industry. To date, this ministry has helped over 300 workers leave the abortion industry. Abby lives in Texas with her husband and five precious children.

What led you to consider the Catholic Church?

I grew up with praise-and-worship music, but when I became Episcopalian, I fell in love with the liturgy.

After I became pro-life … members of the vestry and the minister at the Episcopalian church asked me not to come back.

My husband and I wondered: What are we going to do now? We needed to find a church.

We tried a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. We wanted to find a church that continued to practice liturgy.

A Catholic church in our area had services at the time we liked, so I suggested we go. My husband agreed, but he had the typical misconceptions about Catholics and said, “We are not becoming Catholic.”

All of our new pro-life friends were Catholic, but he insisted that we weren’t going to get sucked in. When we attended the Catholic church, he leaned over during Mass and said, “This is just like the Episcopalian Church.”

I responded that it really was.

The next Sunday, we went back to the Lutheran church that we didn’t like. Afterwards, I was really frustrated. I told him, “I don’t know where we’re going to church or what we’re going to do.”

He responded, “I thought we were going to become Catholic.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him.

“I told you I was okay with it last week,” he responded.

“No, you didn’t. You said this is just like the Episcopalian Church,” I replied.

He said, “That’s what I meant.”

So, we talked to 40 Days for Life’s national director, Shawn Carney, about it, and he contacted his friend Marcel LeJeune, who was the RCIA director in College Station [Texas]. Marcel offered to do RCIA instruction privately with us, and so that’s what we did. Shawn was my husband’s sponsor, and Heather — one of the women who prayed outside Planned Parenthood and who I talked to the day I left — was mine.

Our priests need to be talking and praying about healing from abortion much more. It needs to be said every week in the Prayers of the Faithful. A priest once asked me, “How often do you really expect priests to talk about this?”

I responded, “I don’t know, Father, but when I worked at Planned Parenthood, it was pretty common for women to be lying on the abortion table while holding a rosary. You tell me how often we need to be talking about this.”

Thomas Stephen Monaghan (born March 25, 1937) is an American entrepreneur[1][2][3][4] who founded Domino's Pizza in 1960. He owned the Detroit Tigers from 1983 to 1992. Monaghan also owns the Domino's Farms Office Park, located in the Ann Arbor Charter Township, Michigan, which he first started building during 1984.[5]

Monaghan is a devout Catholic and announced his retirement in 1998 after 38 years with Domino's Pizza Inc. Monaghan sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion, ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company, and subsequently dedicated his time and considerable fortune to Catholic causes. A supporter of the anti-abortion movement and other Catholic teachings "to combat the nation's 'moral crisis'", Monaghan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting them.[6]

He and his wife, Marjorie Zybach, whom he met while delivering some pizza, were married in 1962 and have four daughters: Margaret, Susan, Mary and Barbara. As of 2014, they have 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

After his father died when Monaghan was four years old,[7] Monaghan's mother had difficulties raising him alone, and at age six, in 1943, Monaghan and his younger brother ended up in an orphanage until their mother collected them again in 1949.[8] The orphanage, St. Joseph Home for Children in Jackson, Michigan, was run by the Felician Sisters of Livonia; one of the nuns there inspired his devotion to the Catholic faith and he later entered St. Joseph's Seminary, in Grand Rapids, with the desire to eventually become a priest. Subsequently, he was expelled from the seminary for a series of disciplinary infractions.[6]

In 1956, Monaghan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps by mistake; he had meant to join the Army.[8] He received an honorable discharge in 1959.

Monaghan is a Roman Catholic with a particular interest in pro-life causes.[citation needed] He established or helped establish a number of Catholic organizations and educational establishments. The orchestral Ave Maria Mass,[23] by composer Stephen Edwards, was commissioned by Monaghan "to express in music the spiritual commitment behind the founding of Ave Maria College and Ave Maria School of Law". This mass, recorded and released on CD in 2002, was 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.

Thomas Monaghan is the founder, chancellor and chairman of the board of directors for Ave Maria University. He is known as a wildly successful entrepreneur, the founder of Domino’s Pizza, an avid collector of Frank Loyd Wright items and the former owner of the Detroit Tigers. If his story stopped there, he might seem to fit in with other savvy entrepreneurs whose hard work and ingenuity paid off. But his greatest personal achievements came later in life, when Tom decided to fully immerse himself in charitable works, Catholic philanthropy and the call to restore Catholic higher education.

After divesting himself of all of the responsibilities and lavish distractions from a life of success, Tom set out to build America’s newest Catholic university, in an age buffeted by moral crises and anti-Christian sentiment.

Tom was born on March 25, 1937, in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and his childhood was not an easy one. When Tom was four years old, his father passed away, leaving a wife and two children behind. After two years of struggling to make ends meet, Tom’s mother was forced to enter six-year-old Tom and his younger brother, Jim, into an orphanage in Jackson, Michigan.

The orphanage that would be Tom’s home for much of his childhood was St. Joseph Home for Children, operated by the Felician Sisters of Livonia. The strong presence of the Catholic faith in the orphanage, especially manifested by the sisters, left quite an impact on Tom and inspired him in his faith. One sister, in particular, Sister Berarda, was especially inspiring and asked that whatever ambitious things Thomas would do in life, that he “be good.”

After graduating from St. Thomas High School in 1955 and enrolling at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, Tom enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served for three years and was honorably discharged in 1959. After leaving the military, Tom returned to Ann Arbor to pursue a degree in architecture; but that required money.

Tom’s brother, Jim, told him about a man in nearby Ypsilanti who wanted to sell his business for cheap: a pizzeria called DomiNick’s. Considering that Jim had previously worked in a pizzeria and Tom needed the money, the Monaghan brothers pulled the trigger.

They took out a loan of $900, purchased the pizzeria and took turns working shifts so that Tom could continue his college education. However, he instead became the sole owner of DomiNick’s after purchasing his brother’s share of the business in exchange for the Volkswagen Beetle they’d been using to make deliveries.

Tom started pulling 100 hour workweeks, sleeping in the shop and constantly refining/enhancing his work process; he was known to make a 12-inch pepperoni pizza in 11 seconds. The shop grew, and he made constant improvements to keep up with the rush. Some of these improvements would become industry standards.

Tom began opening new stores, which he called “Domino’s.” As success built upon success, the growth of Domino’s Pizza accelerated, and Tom perfected his own franchising method. This explosive success allowed him to invest in the things he’d dreamt about as a penniless child in an orphanage: luxury homes, designer furniture, sports cars, and his beloved baseball team, the Detroit Tigers. By 1985, Domino’s was opening nearly three new stores a day, more than any restaurant chain in histor

Despite this extraordinary success, Tom felt incomplete. Something was missing in his life that couldn’t be supplied by monetary gain, business success or wealthy possessions. His thoughts turned to what was most important to him, his Catholic Faith, from which he was constantly distracted by the demands of his business pursuits. He recalled the kind words of Sister Berada from his days at the orphanage. Was he being the kind of Catholic that Sister Berarda would want him to be? He knew he needed to do much more.

In 1987 he founded Legatus, an international organization of Catholic CEOs and presidents committed to studying, living and spreading their faith through their professional and personal lives. Tom also established St. Thomas More Law Center, served as president of the Ave Maria Law School’s Board of Governors, and became a knight of magistral grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

In 1998, Tom sold Domino’s Pizza to Bain Capital, Inc, freeing himself from day-to-day business concerns to pursue full time work for the Church. He set out to pursue his greatest dream yet: to help renew Catholic higher education.

The dream began that same year with the establishment of the Ave Maria Institute, not far from DomiNick’s pizzeria in Ypsilanti. The institute would later become Ave Maria College and was subsequently moved to Florida where Tom had incorporated the town of Ave Maria. Permanent university facilities were completed in 2007.