Tom Monaghan credits Polish nun for giving him his faith

The B.C. Catholic



He owned planes, yachts, the Detroit Tigers, and the fastest growing restaurant chain in the world. Then, he took a “millionaire’s vow of poverty.”

Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, admits he went from rags to riches before realizing where wealth had its place.

“I always thought that, for example, when we were young and married and we were living in a house trailer – I was wearing rags, and driving old cars – I was saying ‘this is the right way to do it: I have less now so I can have more later,'” he recalled as he spoke at the Terminal City Club in Vancouver March 3.

Monaghan was born into humble circumstances. “I spent the ages from 6 to 12 in a Catholic orphanage run by Polish nuns.”

Monaghan was not an orphan. His father had died when he was 4 years old. His mother was earning $27.50 a week and decided she couldn’t care for him alone. He and his younger brother had lived at a series of foster homes for weeks at a time before they checked into the orphanage.

There, he met the kindly Sister Berarda. On the tight ship run by strict Polish nuns, “she’s the one who gave me my faith,” Monaghan remembered.

At age 12, his mother fetched her sons and tried to parent again. There was friction between them, and Monaghan was back in foster homes, then a juvenile detention centre, then a farm owned by an aunt and uncle.

When he finished high school, at age 17, his aunt and uncle said he was on his own. A few years later, he’d joined the U.S. Marines, lost his savings on an oil-well scheme, and was back to square one when his brother approached him with a business opportunity.

It was DomiNick’s, a pizzeria in Michigan that had closed. It was up for sale after only being in business for a few months. The brothers borrowed the money, paid $500 down, and tried to get the restaurant back up and running.

“We took over a place that was nothing. It was a hole in the wall. The equipment was very minimal. I didn’t even have a mixer. I had to do it by hand,” he told The B.C. Catholic.

After they signed the papers, his brother changed his mind and went back to his old job. “I was stuck,” said Monaghan, who ran the whole operation and worked 100 hours a week.

Six months later, his brother offered Monaghan his half of the business. “It wasn’t worth anything, but I felt I had to give him something,” Monaghan recalled. So he gave his brother a Volkswagen he’d used as a delivery car in exchange. “That’s how I bought [the other] 50 per cent of what became Domino’s Pizza. At the time, he had the better end of that deal.”

After much hard work and with some dedicated employees and a unique franchise concept, Domino’s Pizza began to grow and grow.

“Domino’s in 1980 had about 300 stores. They were all over the country, campuses and military bases primarily,” he said.

“By 1989, we had 5,000 stores. We were the fastest growing restaurant chain in the history of the world at that time.” In 1985, they broke an old KFC record when they opened 954 stores within one year.

“A lot of people ask me: ‘how can you be a good Catholic and be a successful businessman too?’ I say, ‘gee, it helps you be successful,'” he recalled.

Sister Berarda would tell the boys “honesty is always the best policy.” Monaghan put that into practice. “I was probably the only person in town that was in the food business that didn’t skim. That’s taking a certain amount of the percentage of money and not reporting it.”

Now, he advises young entrepreneurs to stick to ethical practices and treat their employees and customers well.

It was a childhood dream to buy a sports team, and in 1983, Monaghan had his chance. “When I finally made it, one of the mistakes I made was buying the Detroit Tigers,” Monaghan said. The baseball team won the World Series that year.

“All of a sudden, I was – in everybody’s eye – a huge success, and I started living that way. I had looked pretty humble before that. I started buying jets and big yachts and I built a big lodge on Drummond Island. I basically took my eye off the ball.”

That all changed when he picked up Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis in 1988 or 1989.

“There’s a chapter there on pride and, boy, it hit me right between the eyes,” said Monaghan. “I wanted to sell more pizzas than anybody. I wanted to make more money than anybody. I wanted my car collection to be bigger than anybody else’s, have a bigger yacht, and so on.”

Lewis calls pride the “greatest sin.” Monaghan couldn’t sleep that night.

“I took what I call a millionaire’s vow of poverty. I gave up all the ostentatious luxuries: the planes, the yachts, the lodge, and many of those other things. It made life a lot more pleasant, a lot easier.”

He turned his efforts to causes that mattered to him and eventually sold Domino’s in 1998.

“I’m with the Church all the way and I’ve given a lot of support over the years to pro-life causes. I’ve supported pro-life candidates, particularly in close races, and held functions and fundraisers,” he said.

He also has a passion for Catholic education and helped launch a few schools including Ave Maria University and the Ave Maria School of Law. He founded Legatus, an organization for Catholic presidents and business owners, in 1987.

“What I want Catholic CEOs to be are role models. Everybody looks up to people because they are successful – not the right reason, but they do,” he said.

Having that influence “is an opportunity to make a big difference.”Z