Episode 170 - A Catholic Perspective on Faith Driven Investing with Tony Minopoli and Andrew Abela
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In this episode, John Coleman is joined by Tony Minopoli and Andrew Abela to explore faith driven investing in the Catholic world and in the Catholic Church.
Tony is the President and Chief Investment Officer of the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors. In that capacity, Tony oversees all elements of the investment strategy and operations for the Knights, predicated on nearly two decades with that institution and a prior career in investment consulting with the Valuation Associates. Through his role with the Knights, he's also helping the Catholic Church more broadly continue to advance its thinking on faith based investing.
Andrew is a professor of marketing and the founding dean of the Bush School of Business at Catholic University. In addition to a storied academic career, which we may delve into, Andrew has worked with institutions like McKinsey and Company and Procter and Gamble, published broadly, and as a leading thinker on faith based, faith based and principled entrepreneurship and investing alike.
The two join John to share about what it looks like for Catholics to engage in Faith Driven Investing both in the modern day and throughout history.
Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors: https://www.kofcassetadvisors.org/
Busch School of Business: https://business.catholic.edu/
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Richard Cunningham: You're listening to Fate Driven Investor, a podcast that highlights voices from a growing movement of Christ following investors who believe that God owns it all and cares deeply about the heart posture behind our stewardship. Thanks for listening.
Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone! All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests are solely their opinions host and guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.
John Coleman: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman hosting solo today without my co-host Richard Cunningham, but with a very, very special episode. Today we are going to explore faith driven investing in the Catholic world and in the Catholic Church. And we have two extraordinary people to help us do that today. The first guest is Tony MInopolI, who's the president and chief investment officer of the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors. In that capacity, Tony oversees all elements of the investment strategy and operations for the Knights, predicated on nearly two decades with that institution and a prior career in investment consulting with the Valuation Associates. Through his role with the Knights, he's also helping the Catholic Church more broadly continue to advance its thinking on faith based investing. Secondly, we have Andrew Abela with us today. He's a professor of marketing at the founding dean of the Bush School of Business at Catholic University. In addition to a storied academic career, which we may delve into, Andrew has worked with institutions like McKinsey and Company and Procter and Gamble publish broadly, and is a leading thinker on faith based and principled entrepreneurship and investing alike. Andrew and Tony, we are really grateful to have you on today. Welcome to the show.
Tony Minopoli: Thank you. What glad to be here.
Andrew Abela: Thank you
John Coleman: Awesome. Well, to kick off, I was hoping that we could just level set a bit on what this looks like in the Catholic Church today. You're each working on that in your own ways, in your different spheres. But maybe you could start off by just setting the table for what is the Catholic Church's current approach to faith aligned or faith driven investing? And maybe, Tony, we could start with you and then you Andrew.
Tony Minopoli: I was going to defer to the professor among us first, but I'm happy to take a shot at it. You know, for us John, the key is, is that the Knights of Columbus is an entity. We don't create Catholic doctrine. We never have. We followed Catholic doctrine very closely. And as a result, particularly for our investment strategy, we're not going to talk about our funds individually. But in the sphere of managing a family of Catholic compliant mutual funds, we had an anchor to something, because among Christianity, there's a wide different range of beliefs and acceptances among the different groups of Christians. But the Catholic Church, still 51 million people in the US claim connection to the Catholic faith. It's in varying degrees, but within that church. And Andrew knows this better than I. There's even a wide array of attitudes and beliefs, even among those that are supposedly in the more narrow defined Catholic faith. So as a result, we had an anchor to something, because the last thing I could do was try to explain, you know, well, we'll do this for this here. What we believe this here that's different. So we essentially work and we've worked very closely with Catholic view to take the teachings of the bishops and define them into investment rules, into a usable, screenable methodology to which to invest. But in a nutshell, and and Andrew certainly could speak more to this in broad terms, things to do with abortion, contraceptives, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, weapons of mass destruction, things of like cluster bombs and landmines, things of that nature. Pornography doesn't really come in. There's not many opportunities to invest in pornography in the publicly traded market. So that really doesn't weigh in. And then for profit health care that really pays for any of the others, I would say from a practical matter. And I'll end on this hand it to Andrew, is a practical matter. The things that we run into most often, whether we're managing the Knights of Columbus assets or the mutual fund assets, are things to do with abortive action and contraceptives and an embryonic stem as it relates to biotechnology. Those are the real sort of places we can delve into this more as we chat today. But I would say those are the areas where you run into the most things that you have to review. So, Andrew, I'd turn it over to you for your view on that.
Andrew Abela: Thank you Tony. Yes, everything Tony said. And in terms of what's driving our interest now, about 20 some years ago, the Conference of Bishops, which is the group that brings all of the Catholic bishops in the United States together, published their kind of guidelines on faith based investing, and then they updated those in 2021. The first set of guidelines was mainly about excluding the kinds of stocks that Tony was just talking about this time around this in 21, they also asked the faithful to not just exclude stocks that would be compromising, but also to exercise your votes and to engage with management to try to kind of move people in the right direction. And so there's a big conversation now about how to do that. So Tony and I have been working together with a few other asset managers to figure out the best way to do that, the most practical way to do that, and that is the state of the art. I would say at this point in the Catholic investing world.
Tony Minopoli: Andrew would it be worth, maybe if both of us took a second? And the most recent white paper, the main summum bonum white paper that came out for the [...] So John, one of the [...] within the Vatican, wrote a paper, and I had forgotten all the Latin I learned when I was in Jesuit prep school. But then summum bonum, which translates to the good measure, was a paper that came from the [...] of Science within the Vatican, and really took this notion of investing in a way that is not detrimental to the environment, investing in a way that is helpful to the less fortunate. Also engaging it's not just about negative screening, and that is a lot of the work that Andrew is mentioned, that we're teaming up together with some other really fine professionals is how best you engage, you know, the proxy voting, which any shareholder can think about. But do you do a, you know, a shotgun approach of just carpet bombing letters to all these CEOs, or do you really try to get engaged in meaningful engagement with individual companies? I think most of the people involved at that conference and involved in this thought process are not so naive is to think that they're going to move publicly traded companies into the realm of acting like good Christians, but if we could just get them to be neutral. Right. Sell your product, sell your service. But don't be antithetical to Christianity. From my corner, I think that would be a win. And there's a lot of companies that go a lot further and are espousing things that are sort of antithetical to Christianity. So this was interesting because to my knowledge and Andrew, please correct me. This was the first time the Vatican was as sort of forceful on this topic by issuing the main summum bonum and white paper. So just another thought to add into the conversation, John.
John Coleman: Yeah. And, you know, there's a parallel conversation happening in the faith driven investor movement that we're most familiar with that's exemplified by this podcast. And people frame it a couple of different ways. And then, Andrew, maybe you could react to some of this one. It's a very simple framework that a lot of folks use, which is avoid, embrace, engage, avoid being more negative screening, embrace means positive screening or leaning into certain thematic things, which Tony might even be environmental concerns like you just highlighted. And engage means even where something's not explicitly faith forward or positively screened. Since you have a voice as a shareholder in that company, how do you encourage positive movements in that company? Something we've seen lobby for quite a lot lately, for example, or adoption benefits in the midst of the noise around abortion as a topic, you know, how do we encourage companies to include adopt adoption benefits in their health care? Another framework we've leaned into a bit, trying to span both public and private markets is exactly what you highlighted. You've got negative screening. You've got positive screening, again, where you do thematic engagement according to something you think is redemptive, right? A redemptive purpose either in public or private markets. The third we talk about often is cultural formation. So as private equity investors or venture investors, we often have an opportunity, not just invest thematically, but to lean into the actual culture and operations of business, to shape it in a way that's more faith aligned, which could include the supply chain, making sure that that's properly accounted for and handled appropriately, including chaplaincy in the company or organization, employee resource groups that are religious family friendly policies like maternity and paternity leave, adoption benefits. But you get to shape a culture in a way that encourages human flourishing. And then we'll often talk about all of those can be done with a high return. But there is this concessionary impact space right where you may choose to engage in things like Microlending or, we've seen charter school financing, for example, in the US, where you may trade off some return in order to engage in something you find particularly redemptive. So it sounds like the Catholic Church is having a debate right now about the various ways you can positively lean into faith and investing. That's very similar to the one that we're seeing carried out more broadly in Christianity. But, Andrew, I don't know if you're seeing some of the same things that we're talking about now in the research that you're doing.
Andrew Abela: Yeah, there's a lot of parallels. And in fact, the parallels are such that I'm so glad we're having this conversation, right. Because we just need to work together more. What we have heard from, CEOs and executives is it's helpful to them to receive the countervailing pressure from our side. So, as Tony said, even if we just get folks to being neutral on the cultural issues, that's a big win, because too many corporations have been advocates for a very sort of secularists kind of anti-life perspective. And so kind of pushing back against that. And the more we can be kind of working together, I think that really helps. The, employee resource group movement has become really strong. We're happy to host every summer since its initial launch about five years ago, the Religious Freedom and Business Conference, which is the annual gathering of all the leaders of the ERGs that are focused on religious liberty. And so it's like a very ecumenical gathering, not just all flavors of Christians, but also Muslims and Hindus and so on, just arguing that corporations need to make space for people of faith in a corporation. Which I think is a very positive move. I know that, John, you and I have had this conversation already about the role of virtue in the workplace, a very Christian idea that is nevertheless rooted in Aristotelian philosophy and so accessible to pretty much any thinking person, you know. So this is another area that we want to encourage and help, because I think it's not just our society, but our corporations are realizing the consequences of living in a post-Christian world where things we used to be able to take for granted, like basic human decency, honesty, and so on just seem to be eroding and need to be those back. So I think this is an opportunity for people of faith to say, hey, we have some good ideas here to share.
John Coleman: So would you say a bit more, Andrew? And then I'm going to come back to you, Tony, about this concept of virtues, because we also have the faith driven entrepreneur organization that we work with. And it's we talked about we have a very strong belief that for the performance of a company, culture is the greatest competitive advantage in business, that top performing cultures will regularly outcompete others in the marketplace, something that's been affirmed by research from McKinsey and company, from the London Business School and others. And we think that this idea of virtues and values in a business are essential to that culture. Say more about what you mean by virtues and why that's different than values in a business.
Andrew Abela: Yeah. So we make a big distinction between values and virtues. So many businesses talk about their corporate values, but values are just talking the talk. Whereas virtues are walking the walk. The virtue is the action or particularly the habits specifically. So you could value honesty, for example. But to have honesty as a virtue means you're in the habit of always acting with honesty, always speaking the truth. To have self discipline as a value is one thing, but to actually be in the habit of acting with self-discipline is another thing entirely. I remember so I was last at McKinsey 25 years ago, so it's been a while. But even back then we were talking about the power of corporate culture as a competitive advantage. You could imagine a corporation's, we often referred to it when we were talking to our students, the set of human virtues as the human operating system. Right? Particularly the four big ones, the cardinal virtues. So practical wisdom or prudence, justice, fortitude or courage and temperance or self-discipline, those four together make up, if you will, a sort of a human operating system. And just like the operating system on your iPhone, if you don't updated regularly, things start to slow down or not work or crash, you know, same with human beings, same with a corporate culture. If a corporate culture has a particular vice or defect, and I say a lack of honesty or a lack of justice, then that's going to undermine pretty much everything that the corporation tries to do. And the execution of your strategy could be terrific, but the execution is not going to be as effective because you're missing an essential part of human flourishing.
John Coleman: I love the way y'all are approaching that in the intellectual history. For nerd like me, dating back to Aristotle and the discussion of habits and virtues, and obviously to the Israelites before that, I think it's so incredibly rich. Tony, I want to dig into the Knights a little bit more, if you don't mind. One, I would love for you to just tell people who are the Knights of Columbus for those who aren't Catholic and what's the history? And then maybe secondly, dovetail into what does this look like in a portfolio as large as yours? How do you just think about tactically bringing this in to the work you're doing in asset management?
Tony Minopoli: Sure. So without reading all the pages of history, the Knights of Columbus was founded right here in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882 by, Blessed Michael McGivney. In our world, in the Catholic world, blessed means he's one miracle on his way to his second miracle of being canonized a saint. And on another podcast, we'll talk about those. But father McGivney started this because at the time, there were a lot of Catholic men in the area that were building a lot of the infrastructure and a lot of blue collar folks that were dying and leaving widows and orphans. And as a man of action, as a young man in his 30s, he thought he would create this organization that started off literally as a mutual benefit society. And we became what you would call an actuarially based life insurance company, probably around 1900 and 1901. So we now boast over 2 million members worldwide. We're the largest Catholic lay organization in the world. We have about 1.4 million members in the US. It's our biggest jurisdiction and we're basically men of service. So the thought processes is that we work in our local communities to provide charity. In a typical year from the parent, we will donate about $40 million to a variety of charities, our subsidiary councils. We have 10,000 councils here in the United States, but our subsidiary councils collectively donate about 140 million. So across the order, it's about $180 million of actual dollars pre-COVID. And now we're working back up to it John. We were donating as a fraternity north of 70,000,000 hours of community service. So we're now knights of action, I would say as well. So I'm very proud to have been a knight since 1994. I joined the company in 05, so I didn't become a knight for the expediency of a job, but I was very swayed by the work that we do. The general account for the Knights of Columbus on a market value basis, about a $27 billion portfolio. Right outside of my office is our bond trading floor. We manage about $25 billion of fixed income. We have our equity team up in Boston managing north of a billion in equities. And we have followed the USCCB teachings for longer than I've been here. One of the things I brought to the Knights when I was an advisor, I served when I was in evaluation Associates. The Knights were a client, which is how I ended up getting here. But one of the things I brought was to bring a bit more rigor to how we screen company. So we brought in a third party to help us decipher the USCCB teachings and to develop screen lists. We now work with a professor, Professor John Grabowski from Catholic You, who's on retainer to the Knights. Where else can you have a moral theologian and your team when you're investing? But at the Knights of Columbus. So we really do incorporate what John helps us to do. Again, he's not writing Catholic Doctrine, but our screening advisor is a consult, and they're not Catholic, but they're they have a very good screening program. So John sometimes serves as an umpire calling balls and strikes. If we determine that, hey, this company actually shouldn't be screened out, John will help evaluate it. Between us, the screening agent and John will determine what the right move is. As I said earlier, you know, John, the challenge, if it is one, it's really in biotech and health care that we find the most in. Typically, it's a big pharma company that may have had an abortive fashion or contraceptive. Then they divested the drug. Many big pharmaceutical companies find the most efficient way to develop a pipeline is to go acquire a smaller company. So then they acquire a smaller company in their drug pipeline. And when you go down the list, you may find a they have a drug that's now out of bounds. So out they go. And we go through the screening rigorously every 90 days. So as I tell our board, whether it's for the general account of the insurance company or our shareholders of our mutual funds, you're never more than 90 days for scrubbing the portfolio. And in equities it's easy, you know, if it's a big cap company, you can move out of it quickly. You know, if it's a middle sized bond, you know, post a financial crisis. Wall Street doesn't have proprietary trading desks anymore. It can take you a little bit longer to divest. We try to keep a foot in both camps being critically adherent to the faith. But also, you know, I guess in a doctor's sense, trying to do no harm to our shareholders. So we'll develop a plan to move that security out. It's never taken more than a few weeks, but, you know, you develop a divestiture plan. I have to say, in 18 years of being here 18.5 years now, it's never caused a problem to where we could not evaluate another name or a different way of investing or a different company to purchased. And one of the things I'm very happy about is that we've been able to compete in the return space, but while also adhering to the Catholic teaching. Today, as I say to our board, all the way we are walking the walk, but we're living proof that you can do well and you can do good all at the same time. So maybe it takes a little bit longer, but you eventually get there. We're very, very proud of that.
John Coleman: Yeah, I love to hear that, Tony. And we tend to have a firm belief in that. And I want to let you in on this as well, that when you're behaving in a way that we believed in the truth of our faith, and we believe that it's in touch with something really important about human nature and what creates human flourishing. And then if you're leading companies in alignment with that, that those companies can actually perform, that they can succeed because they're in touch with something deeply true about people, about the people that work within a company, about those who purchase their products and services that allow them to perform even greater than those who are anchored in some sort of truth or who are detached from that. But, Andrew, I think I cut you off. You were going to jump in.
Andrew Abela: Not at all. So you've heard the old joke about the professors who argue. Yes, that may work in practice, but it doesn't work in theory. You know, that used to be the argument about faith based investing, right? That portfolio theory says if you're going to exclude a bunch of stocks, then your returns are necessarily going to have to be lower. You're both experience [....] that's that's not true. And I'm a little hesitant because we're not done with the research yet. But we've been working through a study looking at portfolio returns of faith based portfolio versus non and over extended period of time. And I'm finding that in theory, yes, it does work that you can be selective and screen out certain stocks and still not cost anything in terms of returns. Which sort of makes sense. There's a there's a beautiful line in the letter of Pope Leo the 13th from 1887. We remember him fondly because he was the founder of Catholic University. So. He wrote when Christian virtue is observed. That leads to a measure of prosperity, in a sense, because we're behaving in the way God intended. So of course things should work out right. So it's not a terrible shock, but it's good to say to the average Christian investor, you don't have to take a big hit, or you don't have to take any hit on your returns. To be a faith based investor. Now, you might want to, as you pointed out, because there are certain sectors that you might. But now that becomes part of your charitable giving in a sense, right. By taking out a reduced return. But that's a that's a particular deliberate choice.
John Coleman: Yeah. We always think of the uses of capital, not literally black and white, but on a spectrum between pure philanthropy and high return investing. And as long as you're conscious of where you're playing there, it's a conscious decision and you're behaving in a way that's aligned with the wishes of those whose capital you're stewarding. It's open, that spectrum is open, and you can really just Tony, as you would play in a risk return spectrum in fixed income to equities, to private equity. You can kind of choose at what point on that spectrum between philanthropy and return to play. One topic that we haven't explicitly addressed, I'd be so curious to get your feedback on is ESG, and a question that we get frequently, if you're willing to address it, is, is ESG aligned with faith driven investing or where are they align and where are they different? And so I'd be curious, as you all have reflected on specifically Catholic, faith based or faith driven investing and the points of similarity or difference with ESG? Just how do you view those intersections right now and whether that's an active discussion or not for y'all, or you just have your own approach that's completely different from that, and it's not really a topic of discussion.
Tony Minopoli: I'll kick off just how we thought about it particularly, you know, the environmental concerns I think are aligned, particularly with the current pope. Pope Francis is very concerned about the environment and has spoken extensively about it. Not to say that past popes weren't concerned about the environment, but Pope Francis has written and spoken about it extensively. Some of the things that fall under the s are not necessarily aligned with the Catholic faith, so it's a little difficult to align purely with them. And on the governance side, in many cases, a lot of the things that come up under governance, you know, single type of shared class, making sure things are disclosed properly. Those, I think are just common sense investment themes. But broadly, the way that we think about ESG, our first priority is Catholic social teaching. We need to be compliant there. ESG in the capital market sense. You need to understand how a company is perceived. So all of our securities, right, whether it's debt or equity, we do think about the ESG factors. And greatest example as an energy company, just because an energy company is an energy company, it doesn't mean it's necessarily you can't touch it. Because if you think about a company that manages their industrial or environmental impact well and follows all the governance rules, they may score poorly, but they may actually be a solid investment. So in broad terms, we will not invest in something because it scores high in ESG. We will not avoid something purely because it ranks low on ESG factors. But as a prudent investment manager, it's incumbent upon me and my team that we understand the context of how a company is perceived with the real I, John. Is that company going to have an ability, for example, to tap the capital markets? Will they can they raise capital or have they violated environmental regulations in so many states that now their management is going to be tied up in lawsuits. And, and I always it's a tired and old example, but I use it all the time and not to pick on GE. But when GE got in trouble all those many years ago for the PCBs in the Hudson River in New York, it took them forever between law, the lawyers and regulators and fines and then shareholder lawsuits. So management was management able to truly execute on their management strategy? No, they were distracted. So that's we want to understand the context of ESG in a company. Because again, somebody that follows the right way, they're going to be able to execute their management strategy. And we think that will lead to a better investment outcome. But for us, Catholic social teaching outtrump ESG. Andrew.
Andrew Abela: Yeah, couldn't agree more. We have vigorous debates both within our school and with colleagues outside Catholic and other Christian, about the purpose of a business. The classic debate between sort of stockholder stakeholder. This gets a little more abstract. You know, professors like to talk about these. Abstract. Okay. So it's what we do, you know, we bring it back to practice. And my perception is that we went from one extreme to another, where in the 80s and the 90s, we were all talking about profit maximization as the o, the sole goal. You know, it's kind of like a, you know, an extreme form of Milton Friedman, kind of that the purpose of this is to maximize. Profits and nothing else. You know, he did go on to say, but to stay within the norms and, you know, and rules and so on. People forget that part. And ESG in some sense has gone to the other extreme where, you know, set aside the fact that, you know, one reading group can agree with another about what exactly ESG is, you know, said so totally agree with Tony, is you don't abandon a stock just because it's rated low, or you don't buy it because it's rated high, because those ratings can often be close to meaningless. But with the reason we think Catholic social teaching is so helpful is you're looking at the good of a business. And is that not limited solely to profitability? But it doesn't exclude profitability in the way some kind of ESG kind of perspectives take. So if you asked us kind of [....] what is the purpose of a business, we would say the purpose of a business is to do some good for some group of people and to do it profitably because you're not doing it profitably. You're just not a business. You're yet another organization that has to be funded philanthropically or through taxation. Right? So business is the only self-sustaining, self-funding enterprise. And so to do that, you have to basically have a clear vision of the good that you're doing, and then you have to do that with virtue to do that virtuously. And if you follow through on that, all the evidence is that you would be very profitable, successful. And so you would satisfy both the shareholder and the stakeholders is that's kind of that's the win win aspiration. I think that we should all have, instead of pitting kind of social justice versus profitability, you know, makes one good and one bad. No, those things don't have to be in opposition.
John Coleman: Yeah, I think I love what you're saying there, Andrew, because I do think there's a way in which the free enterprise system, upon which capital markets rests or upon which investment rests, actually does contain kernels that can promote human flourishing. Obviously, it can be used for bad, it can be used for good. But actually embracing the right principles combined with that system can help to unleash human flourishing, which is one of the reasons we've seen this explosion in, people escaping poverty, for example, around the we've seen an explosion in the ability of people to escape their circumstances if they're born into poor circumstances, economic mobility, the ability to pursue their own talents and merits. And so we think that certainly the system can and often is used to promote human flourishing, but it also has to exist within a set of values or virtues, as you would say, that allow it to function properly. And with regards to investments around here at FDI, we often say all investing is impact investing. Every dollar you put to work has an impact on the world for positive or negative. The only question is what kind of impact will it have? And I think the pushback against ESG has been a good thing, and that there are many valid criticisms from both the right and the left. And we don't have to get into those. But it's also forced, I think, Christians to say, what is our distinctive set of values that we want to pursue? What is it unique about the Christian faith that we want to see expressed in investment capital? And how can we now define something that's distinctively Christian faith aligned, rather than simply falling in line with framework? That to your point, Tony has some similarities, but some differences, I think, from what dominant Christian doctrine, would be. I have a question. It may be on our listeners minds because, I'm a Protestant. We are notoriously hard to organize, I would say, as it's a set of church denominations, you both had mentioned that you're working with various denominations or orders within the Catholic Church to forward thinking about what this looks like. Could you explain to us what is collaboration look like within the church, across the various pools of assets that you all have? And how does that work? I mean, you're both in the center of it. What does that look like for y'all?
Tony Minopoli: Andrew, please kick this off. But, John, I'll just say, if you can visualize herding cats and wild cats, that's sort of the start of it.
Andrew Abela: Tony is exactly right. Because here's this is just a descriptive statement. Yeah. So the Conference of Bishops guidelines, which I mentioned before for faith based investing, faith driven investing, apply to the funds of the conference itself. Now. The conference is made up of the 200 and some bishops of the United States. Each has his own diocese. Many of them have their own foundations which invest their own association. The conference's rules don't apply to the to the bishops own, foundations. They are purely voluntary. So some bishops well, as a matter of course they will follow those others would say we have a better way to do it. We'll do it differently. So even among the brother bishops themselves, there are some differences. But I say that purely descriptively, to say that there is coordination, but it's not monolithic, you know, and in some sense, I think I would rather have it that way than have a top down. Usually I'll do it this way, because when it's that dictatorial, you can make some really, really big mistakes, right? Whereas when it's more distributed in this way, if you make mistakes, they tend to be a bit more localized, you know? So I think there's room for more collaboration, not just among Catholics but among all Christians, you know, because goodness knows the forces of secularism tend to sometimes seem to be really coordinated. And so if we're going to provide any kind of countervailing power, but I think the best way to do that is through communication, kind of sharing of ideas, kinds of meetings. John, that you've organized, that we've organized, that the Knights that Tony, you participated in, in several of ours. Right. The more kind of discussion we have, the more aligned we can become around the same vision. It's kind of how I would put it.
Tony Minopoli: The few things that I mean, one of the joys working with these disparities is it brought me into Andrew's orbit, and the Knights have had a close relationship with Catholic University forever, but it's allowed me to collaborate with Andrew. Andrew has become a friend. We chat about these kinds of things all the time. We've done. We've done a lot of work together, and there's a lot more work that we're planning on doing together. But Andrew makes a very key point that even across the various Christian denominations, the commonality of whether it's an Episcopalian Catholicism or the various different parts of Christianity, of the Protestants, there's a lot more similarity than there is difference. And if we leave the differences to the side, the core things matter, right? The things on life, the things on family. So I always joke, I have a young man, he's not so young anymore because I'm not so young anymore. But he used to work for me. And when I was organizing the Knights of Columbus mutual funds, he and I were chatting, and he's an Orthodox Jew. And he said to me, you were talking about the diocesan structure. And he said, if we ever had that structure in the Jewish faith, we would have raised $10 billion before you even open the door. And it struck me, because certainly as Catholics and I'm going to take the rest of my Christian brothers with me in the canoe, we never act in concert and imagine the change that we could forge if we actually did. Because again, though, there are differences in the faith denominations. Man, the similarity is a heck of a lot stronger than the differences. And I'm hopeful. And Andrew is right. I think the fact that there's room for interpretation may bring more people into thinking about faith based investing, because it isn't this dogmatic thou shalt do this and thou shalt not do that. But it allowed for us to say, you know what? We're going to anchor to the central tenants of the bishops. We're going to work with those clients. We have clients with separate accounts that'll be a bit nuanced. And as my former pastor said, Tony, it's a very large church with many different people in it. And I think when you move beyond Catholicism into Christianity as a whole, man, it's an even bigger tent with a lot of very disparate, disparate opinions. But we can do better together.
John Coleman: Amen. I couldn't agree more. And we've often had this discussion that man, the people who believe deeply in the Christian faith, we share so many of the same commitments. Right? I mean, we really believe in the dignity of all human being. We believe that every person on earth is created in the image of a loving God, and that everything that we build should be oriented towards helping those folks connect with their creator, live out their human dignity, really pursue something that can bring them well, having purpose and flourishing. And there's really a crisis for that in the world today, right? If you look around the world, people are struggling, they're unhappy, that are lonely, that they're disconnected from that sense of purpose. And we have an opportunity as investors and business leaders every day to either help bring them closer to their creator and to understanding their own dignity and purpose or further away from it. And if we could just work together in concert more, to try and forward that shared vision, I think it could be really powerful as we wrap today, because that was such an inspiring call from both of you. I would love to just maybe ask a personal question, which is obviously, both of you are men of deep faith. You've been motivated by your faith, even in your careers, what you've pursued. Maybe just each of you individually. Tell me, what is it in your personal faith life that keeps you motivated about this, that keeps calling you into your profession, that you'd want to share with others.
Tony Minopoli: Quickly for me, John, my my younger brother has special needs, and he is in. I have to stop at my parents. We still have my mom and dad. They're 85 and 83, and I have to stop at my dad's house to sign a piece of paper for an investment that he's making, and I'll go in there this evening to go see my parents and have my dad sign this paper. And my little brother is literally the living, breathing, walking embodiment of Christ's unconditional love. He'll want to know, how did my day go? He wants to know that you're okay. If he met you, John, chances are you probably give you a hug. And secondly, he'd want to know how your day went. Is everything okay? And watching the Knights of Columbus, its Special Olympics with him when he was a little boy is what motivated me to say. There's something to this faith piece that needs to be part of my life. And when I got to work at the Knights of Columbus at the time, I had two competing offers one from a mega, mega large hedge fund that will go unnamed, and the Knights of Columbus. From an economic standpoint, I made probably the least wise decision of of a guy pursuing a financial career, but knowing that the money that I helped generate allows Patrick Kelly, our Supreme Knight, for wheelchairs, for coats, for kids, for food, for families, for disaster relief, and a very good friend of mine that works at a big Wall Street firm, said, it must be nice going to work someplace every day where the purpose for why you make money is just not to make someone that's wealthy, wealthier, and people that know me well know how important my Catholic faith is and what a part of my identity is. And frankly, to come to a place where we have a chapel on the fourth floor and I can go to mass when you know it's available, I can go down there and spend a few minutes in quiet, contemplate a prayer. It means an immense amount. And, and to be able to live my faith in my profession and, and know the good that comes from the work that the Knights do, it pretty much makes it makes it a life worth living. And I got to grow with it for, for many years. And my first job was working for the Knights of Columbus and Council 16 at their duckpin bowling alley when I was a ten year old as a pin setter, and hopefully my last job as CIO of the Knights of Columbus. The second job paid better than the first. But, I've had an involvement with the Knights of Columbus for for a long, long time Andrew.
Andrew Abela: That it's hard to top. But whoever says that Catholics can't share about their spiritual life, you just proved them wrong, Tony, so I do. So mine comes to a different place. I as a teenager, I fell away from the church, was a practical kind of atheist and went through some kind of dark and meaningless times. You know, it just kind of reached a point where I was very successful. I as you mentioned, I started my career at Procter and Gamble. I was at the time the youngest brand manager worldwide at Procter and Gamble. I thought I had the world ahead of me. I was a McKinsey, traveling around the world, working for them in Russia, just after Russia opened up, when when we all thought that it was going to become a great democracy and so on. And then a certain point, I just realized the emptiness of it all and was called back and kind of gave my life to Christ, came back into the church. And that was almost 30 years ago. And life just keeps getting better each year as I get closer to him, you know, everything makes more sense, everything works out better, and you just start to realize that this is the way we're supposed to live, you know? So 11 years ago, I had a dream come true, and the university asked me to start a business school. And I'd had a vision of what? What would it be like to have a business school that was from the very ground up, focused on teaching and doing research about what does it mean to be a Christian in business? And that's what we've been doing for now, 11 years. We're 700 students and growing. We've been actually double digit growth the last four years, which is not rare in higher education, you know, nowadays. And that's just been a real treat. And so just being able to work with folks like Tony and others and then to kind of bring them to the younger people and say here, this is what you're striving for, is you want to go out and serve Christ in the world of business. You know, it's been a real gift to me, I have to say. Yeah.
John Coleman: Well, gentlemen, that was an inspiring way to end Andrew Abela of Catholic University. Tony Minopoli of the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors. We're really grateful for you guys for being on the podcast, for the work that you're doing every day on behalf of our shared faith. And, just really encouraged by this conversation and hopeful to see what's next. Thank you so much for joining the Faith Driven Investor podcast today.