Magnate's Decisions Stir Controversy

Not quite 24 hours later, the university issued another brief statement. Expressing esteem for Fessio's "great gifts and abilities," it announced that he "has agreed to continue a relationship with us" and would become theologian-in-residence.

Fessio said by telephone that he would no longer have any administrative responsibilities and agreed to stay on "for the sake of these wonderful students." The outpouring of support -- which he said included donors threatening to stop giving and parents inquiring about pulling their children out of the university -- "was very gratifying," he said. "It had all the advantages of dying without being dead."

It happens that Fessio owes his celebrity in part to a previous demotion. In 2002, his superiors transferred him from a teaching post at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco to an assistant chaplain's job at a 40-bed hospital. More than 150 prominent Catholics sent a letter of protest to the Vatican, alleging that the transfer was a reprisal for Fessio's efforts to start a small college in San Francisco that would be more faithful to Catholic doctrine.

Since then, Fessio's reputation has been further enhanced by his relationship to Benedict, who supervised his doctoral dissertation at Germany's Regensburg University in the early 1970s, when the future pope was known as the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger.

Raised in an orphanage, Monaghan built Domino's from a single pizza parlor to a chain of 5,000 stores before selling it for about $1 billion in 1998. Announcing that he intended to die broke, he devoted himself to Catholic philanthropy.

He founded Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 2000, and it was an immediate success, gaining accreditation in record time. But in recent months, many of its faculty and 370 students have been up in arms over his intention to move the law school to the new Florida campus in 2009.

Monaghan also caused a storm last year with comments about his plans to develop a town around the university in which there would be no pornography on television and no contraceptives for sale in drugstores. After an outcry and threats of lawsuits, Monaghan backpedaled.

An Ave Maria official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal if identified, likened the firing of Fessio to Monaghan's dismissal of Bo Schembechler as president of the Detroit Tigers shortly before Monaghan sold the baseball team in 1992. "He's very loyal to the people who work for him, but if he loses confidence in you for any reason, then it's like a light going off," the official said. "Sometimes he's his own worst enemy."