In less than two weeks, the Norbertine priests and seminarians at St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado Canyon will break ground on their new home. It’s a 327-acre campus around the bend from their decaying original.
The Roman Catholic priests are building a new abbey church, monastery, convent, cemetery chapel and administration building. The cost is about $120 million, with just a few million to go (see list, page 12). There are nearly 30 major donors, all having written a check for at least $1 million. Many will be on hand the afternoon of March 18, but for now the abbey is concealing their identities. Call them “The Apostles.”
One donor couple is well-known. Marybelle and S. Paul Musco. They got the campaign rolling. Paul joined the Rev. Justin Ramos and Abbot Eugene Hayes at just about every major closing, often “in (Il) Barone’s back room,” Musco said, the Newport Beach restaurant that’s among his many local favorites.
To know Paul Musco, to meet the gentleman, is to know that he’s old-school in the very best sense of the descriptor. He wears a suit every day, is unfailingly punctual, and values friendships enormously, “but screw me up …”
And he’s very much his parents’ son, one of 10, at that. “My parents always gave,” he said. “We never knew we were poor.”
Perhaps those values, a genetic disposition to generosity, also manifest themselves in small ways, like answering the telephone and chatting up a stranger—or letting him or her chat him up—for two hours.
It happened just that way in 2011. Ramos, abbey denizen since 1987, was on the other end of the line.
“He could talk, but for a campaign to be successful, you’ve got to have a good story,” Musco said, “and St. Michael’s has one of the best.” His only knock—a nod to Mark Twain—make it shorter.
“I’m a salesman. They sent me four pages,” Musco recalled. “I said, ‘Send me a paragraph.’”
The Story
Musco, son of Italian immigrants, is an East Coast-born, practicing Catholic. The Norbertine Order of the Catholic Church has been around for nearly 1,000 years. The kindred spirits of philanthropist and monastery grow from there.
Musco is a fiercely independent businessman.
“And we’re an autonomous entity that reports to Rome,” Ramos noted.
St. Michael’s Abbey was founded in the 1950s by seven Hungarian priests fleeing the communists. The fathers “live a monastic common life of liturgical prayer and care for souls.” The modesty of their lives, the instability of their nearly 70-year home near Cook’s Corner, belie the monastery’s success. St. Michael’s is approaching 100 priests and seminarians, among the fastest-growing Catholic communities in the U.S. The $120 million “Miracle at St. Michael’s Abbey” campaign is one of the largest in the Catholic Church in a decade. Musco has a simple explanation.
“These are just great guys.”
“They had good careers,” Ramos said of the St. Michael’s residents, noting “Rhodes scholars, concert pianists, graduates of Notre Dame and NYU” among the priests. “They want to do something else now.”
The Norbertine Fathers’ ministry and education work is internationally renowned—hospitals, prisons, detention centers. And St. Michael’s Preparatory High School is one of the highest-ranked Catholic boarding school in the country.
But they’ve run out of space for the priests. True. Perhaps in the abbey’s success, industrialist Musco saw his own.
“I didn’t want to be the biggest. I wanted to be the best,” he said.
St. Michael’s had the record and the story, and now the quest for a new home had its patron saints, honorary campaign chairs Marybelle and S. Paul Musco.
In fact, the order has produced a series of short web films, “City of Saints,” introducing the abbey to an international audience—a million views of the last webisode. All didn’t give $1 million-plus to the campaign, but people from 40 states and 11 countries signed up to support the campaign for St. Michael’s Abbey.
The impact of “the closers” can never be overstated.
Servant
Paul Musco has his philanthropic passions, but only in categories: Orange County, education, diabetes, the arts—start with opera and classical music. Otherwise, he’s just about charity-agnostic. “They’re all my favorites. One I admire most, though, is CHOC Follies,” he said. “Why? They get 100 volunteers paying $1,000 to be volunteers.” Musco does have a favorite way to give—big.
“Better if you give a million. It has an impact.”
In March 2016, Chapman University opened the $82 million Marybelle and Sebastian P. Musco Center for the Arts. The Muscos donated nearly half of the funds.
He inspired people to give to the Abbey campaign “at incredible levels,” said Communications Director Casey Cooke. And the campaign co-chairman loves telling donor stories, if not their names. “One woman apostle gave millions,” he said. “Her husband gave her $3,500 to invest. She bought Amazon at $80.”
“There are many people who made this possible,” Cooke said. “The Muscos paved the way to inspiring that generosity.”
“In the Bible, St. Paul says, ‘God loves a cheerful giver,’ Abbot Hayes said. “I haven’t met more cheerful givers than Marybelle and Paul Musco.”
Businessman
Musco has owned and operated Santa-Ana based Gemini Industries for 45 years. It reclaims platinum, palladium and other metals—known as “spent catalysts”—for companies that engage in high-volume chemical processes, like refining petroleum. His customers are companies like Exxon Mobil, other major global oil companies, and other Fortune 100s.
He likes to joke, “I don’t have a heart of gold, I deal in platinum.” But his actions, in servitude and business, belie the humility.
Among an enlightened subset of OC’s working and professional classes, Musco’s business tenets are legendary. He talks of Gemini employees as family, and a good number have been with him for much of the 45-year run.
One anecdote: “A young man kept contacting me, asking about job openings,” Musco recalled. “I told him look, I just don’t have any. My people don’t leave.” One day the plucky tradesman stepped up his job search, showing up at the office of the Gemini founder. And Musco had a solution.
“I said if you want to work here that badly, tell your father to retire.”
Musco’s heart-filled capitalism hasn’t been at the expense of success, we presume—private company, and he doesn’t talk Gemini finances. But his generosity speaks volumes. Longtime friend and former Chapman President Jim Doti told the Business Journal last summer of Musco: “His giving levels are like a billionaire.”
Famously low-key, Musco has been quoted as saying he worked so hard to make so much “so I could give it all away.”
The Norbertines are the most recent example, maybe the most sublime.
Small Request
Know that Musco chooses his beneficiaries scrupulously. Right after the “Ramos Cold Call,” he checked out the abbey. “The spirit there is so different from every other seminary I visited,” he said.
There’ll be no Musco name on any building at the new abbey. “We’ll have a plaque,” Father Ramos said, “names of all donors. Alphabetical.” Musco all along had but one request of Ramos, Abbot Hayes and their fellow Norbertines.
“Build it before I die.”
They’re complying. And at 92, Musco seems in fine fettle. A crowd of more than 200 is expected for the March 18 groundbreaking in Silverado Canyon. All will surely be shaking hands with the Spiritual Leaders of the “Miracle at St. Michael’s.”
