It's a dream come true for Monahan - a way to build a lasting legacy that honors his commitment to conservative Catholicism. In fact, the creation of Ave Maria followed a 2010 pledge that the now-77-year-old Monahan took at the suggestion of billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. The idea? To give at least half of his fortune - The UK Daily Mail estimated his net worth to be $485 million in 2013 - away before he dies. His first step was building the Ave Maria School of Law in 1999. The program was initially based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but moved to Florida in 2009 to be closer to the newly formed Ave Maria University in the town of - you guessed it - Ave Maria.

Monahan decided to invest in higher education shortly after he sold Domino's Pizza to Mitt Romney's Bain Capital in 1998 - a $1 billion transaction. He then used $300 million to open the two schools.

"The most important thing I could do with the resources I had been blessed with was to help build quality, faithful Catholic education," he told a reporter from annarbor.com. "To have a more global impact, I need to focus on higher education to train the teachers, the principals, the future Catholic university and seminary professors."

Unlike Jesuit or more-liberal Catholic academies, Ave Maria University [AMU] is run "according to the guidelines of the Code of Canon Law," a system of laws and legal principles that are made and enforced by the Catholic hierarchy.  Twenty-eight majors including Catholic Studies, Early Christian Literature, theology and Greek, are offered. Mass is offered three times a day on weekdays and four times on Sundays.